For all the various blogging authors that talk about making a living from their fiction, most of us still work day jobs. Which isn't a bad thing - the luxury of being able to write full time can lead to so much procrastination, perfectionism and fear that the newly-minted Full Time Writer rapidly becomes a No Time Writer. Or, locked away in their own little world without a regular reality check, you can get somewhat distanced from what the real world is like. Your material starts cannibalising itself.

Day jobs can be a great source of characters, conflict and circumstance, not to mention reasons to write. I have a sign (one of many) above my desk that reads: If you want out, write the damn book. While I think I am someone who'd be better off keeping at least some small touchstone with reality, the idea of being about to leave my day jobs and write "full time" can be enough to generate some bum glue when the story just isn't gripping me.

But not all day jobs are created equal. And while there are obviously other considerations - your skill set, your capabilities, your other responsibilities - there are some things to consider when selecting a day job.

Student jobs

The jobs that most people can just pick up. Things that don't require special training, talent, knowledge or ability to do at least competently (you may do them more efficiently, successfully or quickly with talent or training, but someone who has none can still do it). Retail and phone-jockey jobs, office and admin assistants and their associated areas come to mind most readily as examples. No special training other than the ability to talk to people and understand them, and (probably) remember a product list or schedule. Most frequently undertaken by students for precisely that reason, and because it generally fits well to student hours.

The pay is almost universally terrible compared to  what you can get with some training, but there are some surprising advantages to jobs like this:

• they use up less mental energy and thought - stacking tomatoes or selling insurance don't require great bounds of creativity, you generally still have a brain by the time you get home
• you have set hours, and you don't take work home with you
• limited responsibility and accountability, and therefore limited stress
• very rarely is anything you do going to be catastrophic, or even particularly important in the long run - even less stress
• there are often opportunities to write where you don't expect

While I'll freely admit I was not happy working retail, it did have some advantages. One of the stores I worked at was so very quiet on my shifts that I managed to write most of my honours thesis on the back of the fax papers. I also have an entire box of story (and jewellery) ideas that I scribbled down on bits of paper each shift. Being forced to stay somewhere with little to do that actually involves your head can be extremely beneficial to creativity, especially if you're a person who's easily bored. You may hate working there, but it'll be great for your writing.

Trained jobs

The next step up from student jobs are jobs that require training. Teaching, management, programming, marketing - most of the job market out there consists of jobs where you need to use your brain. They pay better than the student jobs, but they have downfalls:

• mental energy used working is mental energy you won't have for writing. I've found it much harder to write after a day spent techwriting than a day spent at the helpdesk.
• extra hours, work taken home - as a teacher, there are 'set' hours I'm given, but the work has to be done regardless of whether I've used up those hours or not.
• more accountability and stress, more responsibility

The trade-off here is that you can possibly afford to work less-than-full-time (although finding part-time jobs that are more than two rungs up the ladder or payscale is next to impossible) giving you more time to write, but the energy you'll spend working means more of that time will be spent just recovering your mental equilibrium instead of writing.

Be very careful of jobs that require creativity, especially ones that deal with story. You may find this satifies your 'need' to play with story or be creative, thus diminishing your drive to write.

Full time jobs

This is the kind of job that, until recently, I was pretty set on getting - easy money, it seemed, if by 'easy' you mean 'work your bum off'. By 'full time', I don't mean working 40 hours a week. The real full time job is a job that becomes a lifestyle. The lawyer, the change consultant, the small business owner. They pay a fortune, but that's because there's no time or space for anything else. Work doesn't just bleed into your life, it becomes your life.

This one, in my opinion, just doesn't work as a day job. Not healthily, anyway. The job itself already takes over arguably too much of your life, adding writing in as well means something like sleep or health or relationships has to go.

It took me a long time to accept that a real committment to writing meant no high-flying career somewhere else - that work would have to stay as just something that paid bills. But if you're looking at switching jobs, or wanting more writing time, it might be worth taking a look at the kind of work your doing and the demands it makes, and deciding if another style would suit what you want better.