Mona Golabek: I host a nationally syndicated radio show called The Romantic Hours. As for balance, still trying to achieve that!
Emma Sweeney: Yes, I am a literary agent! It's more than a day job. I only work on a book every couple of years.
Tony Perrottet: I guess you could call it a "day job" --- I'm a freelance travel writer, for magazines. It's not entirely separate from my book-writing, since for example I went back to Turkey cruising the Turquoise Coast while I was writing Route 66 AD, so was able to do extra research. But like any "day job," the problem with magazine work is that it gobbles up so much valuable time --- there's the writing, editing, fact-checking, and it all seems to go on forever. It gets hard to think of larger projects, or to imagine carving out a month or two to research something big. Although I love doing the magazine pieces (I still love traveling every few months), they're rarely as satisfying as writing a book. The pieces can seem fairly flimsy --- and ephemeral --- compared to a whole opus.
Lynn Schooler: I'm a wilderness guide in Alaska, so my 'day job' entails spending a lot of time in far away, wild places, sleeping in tents, and traveling by boat. It's difficult to write under such circumstances, so I usually don't try. But when I'm home (and in writing mode rather than getting ready for the next trip) I make a point of getting up early seven days a week to get as much done as I can.
Maria Rosa Menocal: I am a professor and, more recently, a pretty full-time administrator, and these are substantial day jobs but the job of professor, at a research institution, has got the job of writing built in to it, so to survive you have to learn to write around classes, meetings, and the hundreds of other things you are expected to do as a member of a university community. "Publish or perish" is the cliche. Everyone does it differently, some people write one hour every morning before doing anything else; others write all summer, and so forth. I've never been very systematic about it, so it's often the time I carve out when I am desperate with a deadline...
