I have been temping, on and off, since I moved to San Francisco.  This hasn't always been a great experience.  When I've gone too long without an assignment I've worried a lot about money.  When I have an assignment I often have to balance scenarios where I teeter between absolute boredom and total cluelessness.  I have stuffed more than my fair share of envelopes and spent days staring at excel spreadsheets.  I'm familiar with a variety of copy machines and a pro at following the directions that point at how to clear a paper jam.

Being a temp is being the perpetual bottom of the totem pole.  There are times when I've stretched a fifteen minute task into an hour just so that I don't have to go back to my supervisor and say, for the fifth time in an afternoon, "That's done, what else do you have for me?"  I can feel like a bored and petulant child, always whining, ok, Mom, I did that... nowwwww whaaaaat?

And so far, when I am working, I tend to work a normal forty-hour work week.  It can be frustrating.  I don't write as much.  (But then again, I also don't watch as much as TV, or sleep as much, either.)  It can be hard to pull together a workshop piece, when I know I have a limited amount of time to do it in.  If something is due on Tuesday and a scene isn't working on Monday night, I'm mostly outta luck.  No chance to look at it with fresh eyes on Tuesday morning, unless I do so in glimpses beneath whatever I'm supposed to be working on.  Saving my energy for writing is a battle I can and do lose while I'm working.

It's not ideal, but it is realistic and necessary.

I'm in an MFA program where a lot of people work, either full time or part time.  Some work in writing related jobs and some don't.  Some do it because they love their jobs and and some do it because they love being able to pay the rent.  But everyone finds the time.  They show up and they write.

And, in some ways, I think they are better writers for it.

I started thinking about this because of a discussion that is happening in the comments on a post at the MFA Chronicles.  But I don't want to argue about whether it is "worth it" to go to a program that is fully-funded or not.  I certainly don't want to imply that I think every MFAer/writer who is also working is somehow better than someone who is able to live off what they make from writing (and teaching).  I just want to throw out a few things in defense of those writers I know who do work and who have to balance the writing life with a more traditional 9 to 5 kind of employment.

Writers who work are forced to find more balance.  There was an interesting blog post going around the Twitterverse today about how having children is no excuse not to write.  So, too, is working.  The hours aren't good and often they are snatched from the day and forfeited from the weekend.  That hour you might otherwise let slip by on a "Law & Order" re-run you've already seen?  It's exchanged, too, for an hour at the screen or paper.  Life doesn't stop just because you want to write and I don't think anyone understands that better than writers who work.  Except maybe writers with kids (though this I can't vouch for personally).

Recently, there was a really great article in The Millions, by a working writer, Emily St. John.  In it she discusses what non-writing working has meant to her and interviews two other authors who speak to their experiences. If this is a topic relevant to your life, you should check it out.  The article also reminded me a little of Ann Patchett, who is an author I adore, and who went to the King of MFA programs (Iowa).  I read her memoir of a friendship, Truth and Beauty, a couple years ago.  In it she remembers the time after she finished her MFA, when she ended up moving home and waiting tables for a while.  She worked, she wrote and she felt dejected about both.  This, I think, is the life of a writer.  Neither situation lasted forever.

No matter what, every writer is probably going to have to work, at some point.  And chances are writers are also going to carry-on non-writing hobbies and have relationships or have children, too.  All of that is going to come into play and I sincerely don't think that we can make assumptions about writers based on how much else is on their plate.

Or, says the girl with an often heavy plate, I hope not.

My stomach's growling and it's about time to make dinner, and I think I have too much to say on this topic for a single post.  So, ultimately, what I wanted to say is that tired as I am and as much as I have to juggle, I think there is value in working, for writers.  (Even in the MFA.)