Personal Limitations: Occupational Hazards

Work comprises a large chunk of our time. It may be a “common” forty-hours-a-week occupation or an always-on-call job like motherhood, set-your-own-hours of an entrepreneur or mixture of a student’s life. But no matter the schedule worked or the pay scale, the majority of us, from the kindergarten student to the volunteer retiree, spend most of our life working at some level. Is it any wonder then that our work habits affect our fiction habits?

So the bigger question is how? How does fiction and work interest?

• What does your work require? As a novelist, I read many books I otherwise would might not, so that I might increase my knowledge of craft and market. Likewise, a parent will read novel after novel not on their wish list to keep up with their children.

• What is your work’s social environment? I had a teacher who watched movies so that she could converse with her co-workers and provide a Christian perspective on it. On the other hand, I, as a solitary writer who currently rubs shoulders mainly with other Christians, feel neither pressure nor obligation to see any particular film.

• Does your work bring other limitations/freedoms? My younger sister works as paramedic, allowing her to dissect certain violent films (such as The Passion of the Christ) that I cannot watch because of my writer’s tendency to view the story emotionally.