The trick is to find a day job that pays decently, doesn’t make you want to vomit, and leaves you with enough energy to make things in your spare time. Good day jobs aren’t necessarily easy to find, but they’re out there.

...treasure what it means to do a day's work. It's our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it's certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day's work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you'll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to.

The trick is to find a day job that pays decently, doesn’t make you want to vomit, and leaves you with enough energy to make things in your spare time.

When you don’t have much time, a routine helps you make the little time you have count. When you have all the time in the world, a routine helps you make sure you don’t waste it. I’ve written while holding down a day job, written full-time from home, and written while caring for small children. The secret to writing under all those conditions was having a schedule and sticking to it.

[Q:] What is the best thing about your job?
[A:] Chatting. And the fact that I can write about whatever I like.
[Q:] And the worst?
[A:] Chatting. (I'm always behind with my work) And the fact that I can write about whatever I like - which is terrible when the cupboard is bare of ideas.

Bad days don't make it a bad job. Good days don't make it a good job. Like a relationship, it's the general feeling we get when we think about our work, and not the excitement or stress on any particular day, that defines our fulfillment

Establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time. Inertia is the death of creativity. You have to stay in the groove.

The time-factor. I often wish there are more hours in a day. When a writer is holding, rather tightly, to a demanding job, such as teaching, raising a family and fulfilling certain social obligations, writing can easily take a backbench.

The secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that's even worse

Establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time. Inertia is the death of creativity.

Like most writers, I usually hold a day job mostly 8-5pm. If in between jobs, I offer proof-reading and copy-editing services for raw manuscripts and also carry out transcriptions and translations.

If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment — assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure. In America men often work long hours even when they are well off; such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for their sons.

The worst thing you can say about someone in a society like ours is that they can't hold down a job. It conjures images of unshaven losers with weak grips watching sadly as the jobs slip free and float away. There's nothing we respect more than work, and there's nothing we denigrate more than the unwillingness to work, and if someone wants to dedicate himself to painting or writing poetry, he'd better be holding down a job at a hamburger restaurant if he knows what's good for him.

rearranging your daily patterns to find more time for work isn’t the problem. Too much shit to do is the problem.