Life as a full-time creator
How quitting to write has plunged me into a mysterious and confusing life
I am struggling to fit into a creator’s life.
I wasn’t trained for it. In fact, I was schooled off it with ruthless efficiency.
The world I grew up in was governed by the leading trio of MPC (Math, Physics and Chemistry): a world where my road of education had two clear forks: Medicine, on one side and Engineering on the other.
I became a computer science engineer and discovered algorithms and coding. I enjoyed it. A nebulous MBA degree followed, filling my head with new words and opening my eyes to new experiences. Then, I was thrown into a world that glorified numbers (especially the one printed on currency).
Ten years of consulting, startup, corporate and semi-entrepreneurial roles had reinforced and fine-tuned my thinking to believe in a world of logic, structure and execution.
These lives did include some creative endeavors from time to time — in small doses and with objective purpose. Writing was always my go-to form of expression (from the time I can remember) and I’ve used this fledgling ability to think and communicate on paper across my roles.
Then one day, not too long ago in the past, I decided to be a full-time writer.
In the few months that I’ve been doing this, there is one realization that’s smacked me repeatedly: This is a journey like no other I’ve made in the past.
My experience in changing roles in the past had required me to spike along parameters that I was comfortable in: Analytical ability with a dash of creativity and dollops of decisiveness.
The only ‘new’ aspect I learnt drastically over the years was people — working with them, managing them, manipulating them and in general, getting things done in teams, with teams and across teams.
Jumping into being a full-time creator role, without an umbilical cord to this universe that I understand, is a strange and disjointing experience.
One of my friends puts it like this,
“Think of it like having a sex change. Having spent two decades learning to live in the old form, it would be unfair to expect to get used to the new one in just a span of months.”
I believe it.
It is important to clarify that I am not making a distinction of the discipline of arts and sciences here but rather distinguishing the ultimate objective of the role itself.
Lou Adler describes four types of jobs in the world as Thinkers, Builders, Improvers and Producers. But this is a view through a corporate lens with too much emphasis on corporate and product lifecycle. When I look back into the types of roles I’ve performed or encountered others perform, it falls under four buckets: Problem-solvers, Builders, Managers and Creators.
Think of this equation:
A+B = C
The Problem-solver solves for A,B or C (or more than one) to fit the equation. The variables may increase and operators may change. But she broadly knows the equation she is solving for before she begins solving.
The Builder then takes a solved equation and goes about assembling A and B to get to C.
The Manager always optimizes for the best version of C that he wants by calibrating A and B. He has constraints that prevent the ideal A and B being available and he works around it by dialing down, dialing up or prioritizing.
The Creator on the other hand, is trying to come up with the equation and solve for it in parallel. With neither the inputs nor outputs being constant, he is working on the state of constant fluidity.
In a way his kit looks like this:
There are often overlaps between these three types of roles but in every role there is a spike in one of these aspects which sets the tone for that job-role. An entrepreneur, for example, may see the need to spike in most of these in order to be successful.
But having plunged myself into the role of a full-time creator, I’ve had to bring myself to learn completely new rules and live in a world with completely different sensibilities.
Money cannot be the goal
While the credo, Time = Money is never truer than in a creator’s life, it cannot be the chief driver.
Having made a jump from a conventional career, I continue to have lurking fears around opportunity loss, perceived value-drop and trying to find alternative ways of making money soon. It is difficult to shed this line of thinking when there is a decade’s worth of conditioning reinforcing it. But slowly, a realization that these thoughts are self-defeating for a writer’s life is dawning on me.
I produce more and better when I am without these fears.
In his book Drive, Dan Pink presents an array of assumption-breaking research that shows that beyond certain minimum monetary rewards, using money as the carrot actually worsens creative output.
It’s a different journey, where there is indulgence to the point of it being narcissistic and delusional. Occasionally, by a happy accident, the creative output meets monetary success.
It is exhausting
It is physically exhausting trying to ideate and connect dots all day long.
Over the last few years, I spent my mornings at work (when the office is quiet and most people haven’t arrived) brainstorming on ideas by myself. One, it helped me come up with new ideas and gain perspective on what I was doing. And two, it was just a lot of fun. I loved throwing in ideas and then structuring them, turning them into a plan and acting on them.
But it was always time-bound. I would spend the rest of the day discussing it with peers or executing it and doing a thousand other activities that did not quite require the brain-engine revved up all the time.
Now, however, my days are one big brainstorming session. It morphs into weeks and in turn into months. There is no dead-time where your brain goes into a power-save mode and you are just executing what you thought about. Ideas chop and churn all the time.
And I find it exhausting at times. Often, I’d stop and try to do something transactional and mundane, like folding clothes, cleaning, etc. Then, my clenched brain would relax and ideas would start tumbling in.
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” — George Orwell
Loneliness
Being a writer means you spend a lot of time alone by yourself, actively pulling and stretching the grey cells. It is a scary concept if you think about it. It tends to get very lonely.
Today’s world of super-connected social media and mobility is a blessing in disguise for writers, who are otherwise secluded, to have a quick and dirty fix for their lonely bouts.
No wonder several writers have gone bonkers in the past.
Ernest Hemingway, whose famous philosophy had been ‘write drunk, edit sober’, once carried off a urinal from his favorite bar claiming that it belonged to him. Edgar Allen Poe’s last hours on earth involved roaming the streets in someone else’s clothes and repeating the name ‘Reynolds’ in his death bed. Sylvia Plath famously committed suicide by putting her head in the oven.
Creating most things is a lonely job and writing, especially so.
The ecstatic highs and the depressing lows
The volatility of my mood while writing is something I’d never experienced before.
I had always been fairly even-keeled when it came to my moods and did not usually suffer through highs and lows very frequently. Once in a while I’d be super ecstatic or get extremely low, but on an average I used to be at a happy lukewarm.
But when I started writing, it all changed. One day it is sunshine and blue skies and the next day it is thunderstorms and brooding darkness. I often range between questioning my credibility to even write a word to thinking that someday I would author a bestseller. I am always only as good as the last sentence I write.
Creative endeavors often seem to place people at the edge of their emotional stability. The constant reflection often means that your head is overactive with thoughts and with it comes the volatility of the mind. Plus, what you create is such an intensely personal thing surrounded by insecurities, pride, fear, elation and disappointment. But perhaps, therein lies the beauty of the creation.
A frustrating ignorance about how the process works
I wrote a short story a couple of weeks back. I was proud of it —having set the benchmark very low for myself which was just getting it to completion.
But during this process, I spent nearly a week trying to the write the last 800 words. It just wouldn’t come. I knew how I wanted to end it. I also knew the ‘feeling’ I wanted to exit with, but the words that came just didn’t seem right. I felt like screaming in frustration. I tried everything: writing in different locations, different times, oblique strategies that could spur the right words. Nothing worked.
Then, one evening I gave up, went for a run, came back and wrote those words in 15 minutes flat.
It may not have been spectacular but I believed those 800 words. I don’t know what worked or how it happened but therein lies an unsettling aspect of writing: I don’t fully understand how the process works. I can’t seem to set the raw materials in line to ensure predictable output.
Some days I write off bullet points and the whole thing emerges seamlessly and efficiently. Some days I write like a stream of consciousness which later coalesces into something raw and wonderful which would never have happened with bullet points. They may be mostly shit but occasionally I am proud of what emerges. Even more occasionally, some external validation keeps the spirit burning.
While all of this sounds scary and negative, it fades away when I am in the process of writing. These are early days and I am an infant in this world crawling around trying to find my bearings. But, the more time I spend doing this, the more I feel convinced that, this is a world I would love being in. Even if no one ever pays me to write, I would continue doing it.
Every fucking day of my life.
Press ❤ if you like this. It takes me to a momentary external-validation high. My doctor says its good for my health.
More from Tyagarajan (yeah, that’s me)
I am writer & aspiring author. I like exploring topics on long form ranging from politics to culture to technology. You can check it all out here. In my previous life I worked as a consultant and then later built businesses and products in e-commerce.
