Turn your day-job into fiction
© Zarko Kecman
Diane Chamberlain is the award-winning author of The Bay at Midnight, The Lies We Told and 18 previous novels published in more than 11 languages. Prior to her writing career, she worked as a hospital social worker and a psychotherapist in private practice, working primarily with adolescents. Here Diane advises us on how to utilise our working lives to fuel our writing.
I recently heard Scott Turow say that the best thing that happened to his writing career was becoming a lawyer.
I understand that. I used to work as a social worker in hospital settings. You could find me in the maternity unit helping a teen mom make a decision about adoption or in the Emergency Room supporting the family of a gunshot victim.
It was while I was working in that job that I started writing a novel - first as a hobby, then as an addiction and finally as a second career.
I set that novel in a hospital, realising that I was able to do research simply by showing up to work each morning and paying attention to what was going on around me.
Many books later, I’m still using those experiences in my writing. My new novel, The Lies We Told, is about doctors doing relief work after a hurricane destroys the North Carolina coast. Our jobs can be the gifts that keep on giving!
Think about where you work
Do you think your place of employment is not as interesting as a hospital setting? Maybe you work in a cubicle or a clothing store.
You don’t need a day job to make this work. It’s all about paying attention. Are you in school? You’re surrounded by teachers and students and an intriguing setting (honest!). Are you a homemaker? Pay attention to your family in new ways with new eyes and get out when you can. It’s essential to feed that creative well.
Open your eyes a little wider. Pay attention to the stories you hear and the behaviour you witness. Become a keen observer of everything going on around you. This advice, though, comes with a serious caveat.
Remember your integrity
Firstly - and this may sound obvious - your writing needs to take a backseat to the job someone is paying you to do. If a colleague has information you can use in your writing, offer to buy him lunch outside of work time in exchange for picking his brain. I’ve lost track of all the doctors and nurses I’ve treated to lunch!
Secondly, avoid the temptation to base a character on someone connected to your job. I’ve written twentybooks and I can honestly say that I’ve never based a character on a real person, ever. I’m quite sure I never will.
Not only can it get you into a world of legal trouble, it limits what you can have that character do or say.
Be inspired, but don’t steal
The same with the life stories you hear on the job. They don’t belong to you. It’s okay to learn from them, but not to steal them. So while you may be influenced by your clients, customers and co-workers, never lift them or their experiences from real life and plant them in your book. This is as much about integrity as it is about liability.
I knew that my job as a social worker and later as a psychotherapist in private practice put me in a challenging position for a fiction writer. I was privy to the most extraordinary life stories, all of which I had to ignore when it came to my writing.
Yet my experience as a social worker, like Turow’s experience as a lawyer, greatly influences my fiction. When I worked in the maternity unit, for example, a baby was born with horrific anomalies (I’m altering details even in this article). I took the young mother to the nursery to see her baby for the first time, and I was deeply concerned about how she would react. The first words out of her mouth? “Oh, he’s beautiful!”
I’ve never written specifically about that incident, but I’ve used the dynamic I witnessed - a mother’s love sees past her child’s differences - many times in my writing. Change what you witness on the job into something fresh and new.
Be empathetic
Here’s an exercise I do regularly that helps me not only to write but to keep me centred as well. Imagine yourself inside the skin of the people you see as you go through your day. I am the disabled woman at the next table in Starbucks. I am the boy with the pierced eyebrow. I am the obese man encroaching on my seat on the plane.
When I do this, I feel a deep and intense empathy. How does that help my writing? It inspires characterisation (the obese man helped me create a sympathetic psychotherapist in Secrets She Left Behind). The bonus in this exercise is that you’ll feel less alone and more human. Writing is lonely business and feeling connected to other people is essential.
Decide what you want your career to be
When young people ask me if they should major in creative writing or something else, I always struggle to answer.
Personally, I would opt for the “something else”, a career that excites me and is more likely to result in a paying job. You may not learn how to write as well as you would in a creative writing course, but you will have food on the table as you pursue your dream.
No matter what kind of work you do, you can always write, and if you open your mind and heart, you will find your story there.
DISCLAIMER
Neither the author nor EssentialWriters.com are responsible for any loss of business or profits arising from action followed due to this advice. This article is intended for general guidance only and professional assistance should be sought based on your particular circumstances.
