Product Description

Resolution and perseverance are required to build a writing career and if you’re going to succeed, you don’t need the hype or hyperbole so often dished out in other writer’s guides. You need a candid, no-nonsense account of the daily grind of the writer’s life, with the potholes and pitfalls clearly marked. This book is your road map, written by someone who’s lived the writing life for years, with more than sixty published novels and nonfiction books to his credit.

And what a life! Big names like Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, Tom Clancy, Sue Grafton, and thousands of others not nearly as famous live it—why shouldn’t you? All you need is talent, courage, perseverance—and this book.

In Quit Your Day Job, Jim Denney lays out a sound, strategic plan for building a career as a full-time writer. This is not a book of fluff and glittering platitudes. Denney maps out the positives and the negatives of the writing life with gritty candor. Why? Because he doesn’t want your dream of full-time writing to become your worst nightmare. He wants you to succeed.

After you read Quit Your Day Job, you’ll be fired up and ready to take on the world. Devour this book—then hold on tight, because your life is about to change.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #788645 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
"Follow Jim Denney’s suggestions and you will be well on your way to making the dream a reality." -- James Scott Bell, award winning novelist and Writers Digest contributing editor.

"Jim Denney has written a book that every writer and every aspiring writer should own. Extremely well-organized, up-to-date information." -- Deborah Raney, award-winning author of A Scarlet Cord and Beneath a Southern Sky

"Most career-bent writers are destined to struggle. Read Denney’s book and save yourself much of the anguish." -- Jim Frey, author of How to Write a Damn Good Novel

"Wow!The definitive primer on freelance writing. If you think the writer’s life is for you, you must read this book." -- Angela Hunt, author of The Canopy

From the Publisher
Learn How To
• Deal with rejection
• Manage the stress of financial insecurity during the early days
• Keep multiple projects in the pipeline
• Set a writing schedule
• Develop a bevy of editors who call you
• Hit deadlines
• Believe in yourself
• Decide if you need an agent
• Write quickly
• Locate publishers
• Think like an editor
• Set goals and plan your career
• Study the markets
• Effectively self-edit
• Understand and negotiate contracts
• Sell one piece many times
• Work at home without interruptions
• Have fun
• Market your work
• Write with intensity
• Finish what you start

From the Inside Flap
For all the drawbacks and pitfalls, I still believe that the writer’s life is the best life of all. You never have to wear a watch, much less a suit and tie. You don’t have to carry a cell phone. Your daily commute is a stroll down the hall. You can take off to be at your kids’ ball game without asking the boss. You can set your own hours, work a night shift if you want. You can write in your pajamas, your underwear, or your birthday suit (I’m partial to blue jeans and a tee-shirt). When you are a writer, you really can sleep late, do what you enjoy, and yes, you can make a ton of money.

And you know what the best part of it is? People in ordinary jobs can’t wait for retirement; writers can’t imagine why anyone would want to stop working. I don’t know about you, but I intend to keep writing until they find me slumped over my keyboard at age 102, with the words "The End" glimmering on my computer screen.
— Jim Denney

Customer Reviews

Is it the topic or the writer?
This books earns the four stars by being interesting and helpful. It's well-written (naturally!) and puts what could be very dry business information into a format that creative types will be able to stomach.

My biggest problem, the reason I can't give 5-stars, may not be the authors fault really. The title and the synopsis lead you to believe this book is going to provide practical, how-to information about becoming a writer that makes enough money writing. The reality is laid out quite early on in the book. The first step, the unescapable step, is poverty. And not just any poverty, but poverty that you buy in to with a small fortune. His map to success starts with saving up an entire year's worth of your current salary (!!!), then living like a pauper for 1 to 2 years. During that time, you may not receive enough correct feedback to discover if your books are not selling because you are a bad writer, or simply haven't sold YET.

Now granted, this could be the reality. Perhaps he is just telling it like it is. But really, does such a dire starting point merit such an upbeat title? How to quit your day job boils down to saving up enough money to pay your own salary to yourself for an entire year. Nice work if you can get it, but I don't know many people that can store up a years salary in any reasonable amount of time. Can you?

Mixed bag
Quit Your Day Job! was a mixed bag of helpful insight and bland anecdotes. On one hand, he does give some helpful insights into the business aspect of writing, mainly how hard it is, and it's obvious that the "quit your day job" of the title means that you need to quit your day job to fully focus on being a writer. Denney tells you different functions of people in the writing-business world, but it wasn't anything I couldn't look up on the internet and find within five minutes.

On the other hand, Denney, like most writers that write a book about writing, gives vague and useless tips to actually getting published. He basically says, "You could do this, or you could do this. Both of them work for some people." Also, a third of the book is just anecdotes he quoted from other writers. I finished the book wanting more.

Sometimes Denney goes too far on the business tangent and makes writing feel like a cold, sterile occupation. He goes so far that he suggests that, to get the most for the money you're getting paid, don't write long words, like using big instead of gigantic. And he's dead serious.

Also, don't buy this book if you're trying to learn how to write. This is definitely about the business of writing. I would recommend Immediate Fiction, by Jerry Cleaver. Not only does it tell you how to write, it has a chapter at the end of the book about how to go about publishing your book. That one chapter was more helpful than this book.

For anyone considering any full time writing career
Quit Your Day Job! by Jim Denney is a no-nonsense instructional guide which is strongly recommended reading for anyone seeking to pursue writing as a full-fledged, moneymaking, professional career. From the seven essential habits of a working writer (such as "write daily" and "set ambitious but achievable goals"); to the do's and don'ts of submitting one's work; professional relationships in the writing biz; learning how to write as quickly as possible without undercutting quality; and more, Quit Your Day Job! is a superbly presented, quite accessible and thoroughly "user friendly", reference resource for anyone considering any full time writing career.