The Downtown Writers Network is a resource for independent writers in central Ohio.

Located in Columbus, we provide services to freelancers, businesses that use freelance talent, and all creative writers in the dynamic mid-Ohio market.

How to Survive the Lean Years

Jennifer Bosveld, Director
Pudding House Writers Innovation Center
Johnstown Ohio

"You are writer of your own life-script. Don't write it lean."

I didn't "quit my day job" until I'd achieved some successes in nonprofit, corporate, and government jobs during the early part of my life. And that's what I recommend to students and aspiring writers who come to Pudding House Writers Innovation Center or who are in the various classrooms and workshops I lead.

Many writers call Pudding House seeking publishing and critiquing services and in the course of conversation reveal that they're wanting to quit their jobs "and just write." I offer a passionate, "Then what would you write about?"

I purposefully did not work more than two years in any one place -- because I am a writer. I wanted a diversity of experience, vastly different pools of knowledge at a thorough and professional level. There are enough subjects I know just enough about to get me into trouble. There is great value in actually working in a field you want to write about. As Director and Chief Executive Officer of an organization, I needed to be a quick-study who was Good Morning America-ready to talk like I knew something. That meant cramming sometimes overnight on a issue and getting ready to face the public with what I had to know.

Many poets make the mistake of miss-using language they're borrowing from a field they know nothing about.

When I was in my twenties I was in my first writers' workshop and shared a poem in which I'd placed two birds in the same tree. These two birds would never land in the same tree, I found out from someone in the group, and I felt foolish. I've learned since then to watch my science. The amount of research it takes to write detail well should keep us busier than we'd have time for and could afford if we have no other source of income. Let the 40-hour traditional paycheck keep the utilities on. More importantly, choose work that contributes to community and to a treasury of experience that will come in handy at the most surprising times.

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