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While writing and after you write your book, life is forever changed. Becoming an author does that to you. The grass feels different under your feet all of a sudden and then you’re tasked with becoming parent to a baby called a book and suddenly shit gets real. However, as we’ve entered NANOWRIMO, we began pondering the plight of trying to manage both tasks: working and writing.

Please note, we’re not suggesting that anyone quits her job. Really. Unless you want to or are provoked. Kidding. 

It’s just that in speaking to other writers about how their day jobs were affected by their books, it became clear that day jobs across the world contend with the anomaly of pesky writers doing their damnedest to manage both writing and working for the Man.

Our thought process lead to the following freaky conclusions about why your book could get you fired: 

1. Because you realize that your book needs to be worked on at more than just five in the morning before the kids are awake and at one in the morning after you’ve finally wound down from your day and everyone is asleep.
2. Your book requires research, fact checking, interviews, and uninterrupted time to get this book written and your boss refuses to count “I have to get this book done before I die” as a plausible illness for use of one of your sick days.
3. Your book is based on the owner of your company and the scandal which led to an overhaul of procedures in response to sexual harassment claims.
4. Your book title is a spoof on a silly health and wellness initiative that no one has the guts to publicly scorn … including you … until now.
5. Your boss “found” your manuscript (thanks IT dept.) and decided he wanted to “write it” instead.
6. You sent a VIP client to voicemail by accident (not really) because you were writing on the job.
7. Your book prompted an investigation into your company’s mysterious offshore Bermudan bank account.
8. Two weeks went by and your boss decided to ask someone where you’ve been. Ms. Rita in the cubical next to yours admitted, “I think he’s somewhere writing his book.”
9. At your first book signing, your team decides to come and show their support, only to hear you say to a friend, “I can’t wait to quit my bullshit day job and write full-time.”
10. During meetings, you find yourself cutting people off, or worse, pretend-falling asleep mid-sentence in an effort to get back to your desk and write.
11. Your boss gave you an ultimatum: attend the mandatory company retreat (which fell on the same weekend as your writer’s retreat) or be fired. You chose the latter.
12. After six straight (and sleepless) hours of writing, your colleague volunteered you to help stuff company Christmas cards. In response you threw your stapler at his head before being promptly escorted from the premises.
13. You put a sign on your office door that reads, “He who knocks, will suffer my wrath!”
14. You put the CEO on hold to look something up and got distracted when a sudden idea for a plot twist came to mind.
15. You went to the company Halloween party as an overworked professional who’d rather be writing full-time.
16. You gave your book as holiday presents to your team with the inscription, “It’s only a matter of time before I’m out. But, in the meantime, enjoy my book” on the inside cover.
17. After numerous awards and thousands of books sold, you inspired more than half of your colleagues to start writing. Your action incited a revolution and well, the rest is history …
18. The first line of your Acknowledgements reads, “Thanks first and foremost to my boss for making life so miserable that I was inspired to make writing my book a full-time endeavor.”

Seriously, how do you make time to write while working full-time? Do you dream of being able to write full-time without the inconvenience of your full-time job? OR do you have a real story of being fired because of your writing endeavors? Do share!

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