Use Your Day Job to Fuel Your Creativity

Notebooks I used between 2000 and 2010 to capture ideas as I went about my day,

by Jesica Carson Davis
 
Being an obscure or emerging writer often means taking a day job while you submit your creations to lit mags, and sit and wait for that big break. However, being an artist who works outside of your creative field doesn’t have to be a death sentence for creativity. In my experiences, I’ve learned to make the dichotomy between the repetitive, dry writing I do all day and the weird, open, poetic things I write in mornings and on weekends, work for me. Navigating the gap between the two has enabled me to more effectively channel my creative energies for my personal output.

Those of us with jobs know that those jobs can help make us better writers, even when they aren’t related to academia. In fact, finding inspiration for our creativity isn’t limited to those working in writing fields. Day jobs outside of creative spheres and practices can be necessary for any number of reasons, but more than that: they can enhance instead of detract from artistic pursuits.

For example, when I worked as a cashier, I jotted down snippets of overheard conversation to later use in a poem or story. If you work in a coffee or retail shop, you may want to try crafting flash fiction pieces about the people around you. A landscaping job in late summer could lead to ruminations in the form of a braided essay on the cycle of seasons and the human condition.

Repetitive tasks often seen as boring can free up your brain to process ideas in the background. How many good ideas pop up when you’re not paying attention?

A 2014 study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, found that bored  people “are more likely to engage in sensation seeking”—that is, to look for activities or sights that engage their minds and stimulate the brain’s reward centers. These people are more prone to “divergent thinking styles”—the ability to come up with creative new ideas. “Thus, boredom may encourage people to approach rewards and spark associative thought" (Article).

The key in making the most out of associative thoughts is to always jot down the idea, even if it’s just a quick note spoken into your phone. I always carry a small notebook in my purse, just for this purpose.

These days I’m working as a technical writer, which means that among other things, I write the not-super-exciting content of the Help section for software applications. Besides instilling the discipline required to work under periodic hard deadlines, being a technical writer has inspired me to use technical language creatively. When I write up bulleted lists of usage rules, bullet points can find their way into my poems, or when I learned how to read code to document APIs, I was inspired to write poems in the format of Java. I’ve even written a poem as a set of FAQs.

When writing for my day job, I do so in DITA, a subset of XML that requires every topic to be categorized as a concept, task, or reference. This organizational method, called information typing, has changed the way I conceive of certain pieces of writing. First, I ask: what type of information am I trying to convey? which leads to what’s the best form to communicate it? This questioning has transferred into how I approach my creative writing process, and can open up a piece to possibilities that I hadn’t previously considered, such as hybrid forms that fall outside the scope of a traditional poem.

A large part of writing involves observing your surroundings, both external and internal. Indeed, writing is a practice that happens even when you’re not actually writing. When you are at work, start paying attention to your surroundings. On your breaks, turn your focus to mining potential material for your artistic endeavors: interesting characters, energetic language, activated observations, physical metaphors. If you can practice watching for interesting images or moments, even while performing the dullest of tasks, it becomes easier to recognize those moments outside of work, to reach for that notebook, and to make time to write.

For example, if you’re in the same small space every day, like a cubicle, consider going macro to observe the smallest details and shifts in light, see what ripples off them. Try sketching how the shadows make you feel. Or, follow in the footsteps of poet, Frank O’Hara, (who wrote Lunch Poems during his lunch breaks when he worked at MOMA), and use your lunchtime in your day job, even if it’s once a week, to practice the art of writing during those spare moments. You don’t have to be attached to the outcome; the writing doesn’t have to be good, just focus on the practice. Eventually you may look at your notes and discover something you can use.

So if you’re working in a non-academic job and jealously watching others turn their creative passions into actual, rent-paying jobs, try to remember that without that dull job, you might not have material to tap into. Instead of feeling your job is stifling your creativity, start paying attention to how your job can fuel it. The dream of supporting yourself through your creative output is already happening to you everyday. It’s up to you to find ways to channel it purposefully.

Resources
Approaching novel thoughts: Understanding why elation and boredom promote associative thought more than distress and relaxation

​Code Poetry: Poems Written In Programming Languages

​Source Code Poetry

Free Download of Frank O’Hara’s book, Lunch Poems

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