Q&A Friday: Do You Do This Full Time?

07 Jan, 2005 by John Hawkins

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Question: “Do you do this full-time? If you do it in your part time, how do you manage? By the time I get home from work, watch two episodes of the Simpsons, massage my wife’s feet, and do my homework, I have little energy for such endeavors.” — IlliniGuy

Answer: I have a full time job doing tech support and RWN is in essence a second full-time job. I manage by working like a dog Sunday-Friday. Typically, I get 5-6 hours of sleep per night during the weekdays and work on RWN constantly from the time I arrive home (although I do listen to music and watch TiVo while I work a lot of times). On Saturdays, I catch up on my sleep and try to spend most of the day relaxing, although just as often as not it doesn’t work out that way.

So, although I really enjoy working on RWN, it is an enormous amount of work. But, if you want to write for a living one day — and I do — nobody is going to hand it to you on a silver platter; you have to pay your dues and prove you have what it takes by building up an audience.