I am a lawyer who works 80 hours a week. I want to quit and write novels for a living. Help me find the courage...

I am a lawyer who works 80 hours a week. I want to quit and write novels for a living. Help me find the courage, Veeky Forums.

Why not just work 40 hours a week?

Whether it's to write a novel or not, working 80 hours guarantees that you live a cucked existence.

dude it worked for john grisham

How much money do you have saved?
Enough to retire today?
If not, don't quit your day job.

Don't you enjoy what you do? Im also in law and perhaps I'm autistic, but I enjoy every moment of it.

Who the fuck works 80 hours a week! Holy shit!

>write novels for a living.
AHAHAHAHAHA

I do enjoy it sometimes. That said, I don't have time for anything outside of work. Reading, writing, and dating have completely disappeared from my routine. I work, sleep, and work more.

No. A few thousand. I live in Manhattan which doesn't help my savings.

Thrillers are fucking shit.

Doctors and some lawyers.

Are you from NY?

Chances are you're fucked already neurologically speaking (too much garbage in your brain) but if you want to write thrillers or some lame shit like that then why not find a comfier job in a small town somewhere?

How did you even find the time to write this post, working 80 hours a week?

If you can cut it to a decent amount (40 at most) then do that instead of quitting. Having no money for the rent will make it very hard to write novels.

If you can't cut the 80 hours, then quit, novels or not. I really can't imagine any situation that is worst of spending 100% of your time at work like you are doing. Even if you end up homeless you will still be happier.

I hear a lawyer sits around all day reading documents, making phone calls about documents, and doing nothing so romantic as in the movies.

However, you don't actually make money writing books. That's more like winning the lottery. 4 million books are out in every genre right now.

I have the time because I'm sitting at my gate at the airport waiting to go depose some dipshit. I agree about quitting generally, but I have no backup plan.

And what's the plan for continuing to work this much? Even if you aren't doing yourself irreparable damage, you are wasting away the only life you have.

Don't be such a fag. He is maintaining the social system and being a responsible adult.

OP how old are you? Why not try getting into an MFA program?

A lot of partners or people who want to be partners are pressured by their firms to arrive early and stay late every day.

The only thing that's certain is a devastating depression.

Im 27. I worry about the job prospectd after an MFA program, as much as I'd love to enroll in one.

There's a famous transcript of a deposition in which a man took over ten pages to correctly answer the question of whether there were any photocopying machines in his office.
Consider that a similar human being could be a party to your next case, and find a new job before you kill yourself.

onccccce a maaan

What type of law do you practice? It sounds like you're in biglaw, so maybe you could move to a more low-key practice, which would also involve changing locations.

Also, anyone working in finance.

>biglaw

for you

OP, this is what I'm afraid of. I'm starting university soon to study finance, but I have a passion for literature. I don't want to end up like you, regretting life. What do?

People who fail at chasing what they love are happier than those who succeed at doing what they do not love.

Yes. my life is so degrading and meaningless that I'm now indifferent to whether or not it continues.

I would begin by not studying finance. If you have this kernel of resistance already, it will only grow and grow over the years.

If I could do it again, I would have supplemented my literature degree with something more practical, such as business or technical writing. Then Id find a job which would provide a modest income but that would not require me to devote to it my entire life.

You're obviously a type a personality so having a plan will help you greatly. If you aren't married or have children this plan should work nicely
>Start living stoicly (Spartan) now
>Set aside a fund with your savings
>Stick it out and work for a year or two more (start thinking about what you will write)
>After you've amassed a decent savings sell your house, quit your job and move to the smallest, cheapest place you can find
> Live off your savings and house profits and pursue your dreams
>If it doesn't pan out by the time you're broke then oh well fuck it go back to work at least you tried, more than most can say.

Write something, anything here. Let us analyze if you have the talent for that. If you don't, afraid of critique, then don't even bother with this plan.

Thanks guys. I guess once I start university I will consider transferring and whatnot.

Sure. Give me time to return to my computer and I'll post a section of a novel I've been working on.

Also, thank you for the outline of your plan. A structured roadmap is key at this point.

Okay guys here's an excerpt:

>Crash! There was a loud noise that startled me in my chair. "What was that?!" I looked over and saw a baseball that had broken my window. I walked over and inspected it. I looked at the window that had been broken by the ball and saw a face. It was a ghost-- or was it?!

"novelist" is probably the job that you are least likely to make a living off of

You repeated too many words in the short paragraph. That does not make for smooth prose.

Is this supposed to hook me in? Describe what the character is seeing. SHOW me a possible ghost, don't TELL me it's possibly a spirit. This builds suspense in the reader and allows us to foreshadowing and ask questions about the text as we read it. It makes it more engaging and fun.

holy.... i want more

...

Not OP

My dad is a lawyer and he fucking hated it. Told me never to be a lawyer. Now I'm an investment banker and i fucking hate it. I will tell my son to not be a lawyer or banker. Through process of elimination hopefully someone gets a job that doesn't shit on your soul.

I was expecting pancakes or a golden retriever

You shouldn't do that and instead prepare your son for the inevitability of hating what he does for a living.

Parents who keep telling their children how important it is to find a job you like (thereby implying that that possibility exists) is why people are so miserably unhappy with their jobs

Both my parents enjoy their jobs. There is worth in finding what you like.
You can find joy, if you want to is a different question.

>80 hours a week

Holy shit lad, that's the amount of hours i do in a month

>working anything more than part-time unless you really enjoy your job or making bank

liar

>I stepped back and exhaled sharply. "Gasp!" The man on the other side of the now broken window had black hair, small circle glasses, nice clothes with a big collar around the neck area, and a big cigarette in his mouth that he was smoking. I looked down at the baseball and broken glass under me, but they were gone. "Baseball is a spook and so am I," the man said.

I don't lie, you do though.

...which is exactly what a liar would say

wow this is some next level shitpost. Every thing is there.

Or an honest person, you decide, one of us is the liar.

true Veeky Forumserary lifestyle

Hey man. 27 is ideal age for MFAs.

George Saunders was about your age when he went to Syracuse. Nic Pizzolatto (sic) who wrote True Detective, Galveston etc was the same age when he went for an MFA.

If you're a trained lawyer you'll likely find work afterwards. It's more likely you will than some humanities student who studied EngLit then an MFA finding a job afterwards.

OP here. What the heck, that wasn't from my writing: Here is an excerpt from a short story I'm trying to get published. It's called "Trains":

>"It’s National Orgasm Month already and Mother enters my bedroom sans knocking to tell me about cousin Lenore, tells me she’s made it to the Grand Final, apologizes that I am the last one in the family to find out. Lenore is what, thirteen?, I think.

>Last time I saw her in person must have been at her younger brother’s Humanist Baptism. I remember the day clearly, which is odd; cloudless, breezeless, all of us squirming red-faced in seven of the twelve bowling alley lanes rented for the occasion and silently accommodating the growing discomfort. The faux priest’s fault, as I remember it. His lengthy almost tearful sermon about the virtue of youth. My genuine surprise that the bottled water hadn’t dried up by the time he splashed some onto the wailing baby’s noggin. All of us surely wishing it was our face to be splashed by the time someone yelled "Let's bowl!". Really; that hot.

>Lenore spent the entire ceremony tugging on my dress and insisting on a pinky-finger promise to instruct her how to imitate the way I wore my make-up and made my “thingys” poke out. “Oh these?”, my question. My surprise! Couldn’t have been older than eight. I avoided her for the rest of the day, turned now and then to see her lumbering after me in her mother’s high heels through the maze of unfamiliar relatives.

>Lenore spent the entire ceremony tugging on my dress and insisting on a pinky-finger promise to instruct her how to imitate the way I wore my make-up and made my “thingys” poke out. “Oh these?”, my question. My surprise! Couldn’t have been older than eight. I avoided her for the rest of the day, turned now and then to see her lumbering after me in her mother’s high heels through the maze of unfamiliar relatives."

Any feedback welcome and appreciated.

Are taking after Harper Lee's style?

What's the context? Why does the narrator call it a faux priest if this is an accepted tradition in a distopyian future? Which is how I'm interpreting it. Lemme know if I'm wrong

no ur shit

Huh? No. Also I posted the same paragraph twice by accident at the end.

The context isn't really all that futuristic or dystopian. National Orgasm Month is something the narrator (a single childless woman in her late 30s) sees advertised on TV. One of the main "themes" in the story is youth worship and how pathetic she feels in relation to her 12-year-old cousin who we learn is basically being sold as this super talented world-at-her-feet hotstuff superstar. It started off being a real priest in a real church but then I thought wait a minute, religious is pretty much dead, as is TV, so I turned it into a humanist baptism (which I don't believe is a thing IRL, though there are humanist marriages etc) in an infantalized space (i.e. it's being hosted at a bowling alley because the kids'll enjoy it).

A thought struck me. Make it actually dystopian, as an allegory to today's youth worship. It will be more interesting to general public (instead of pretentious) and critics love that symbolic shit.

Your style is very alike Harper Lee's. Read her only book and you will see.

Interesting. I like the set up. A biting criticism of the aimlessness of the overseculurization of American society is how I read it. Regardless of your personal religious interests this seems to be the problem you are pointing out. Do you have a solution to this social ill?

Find a job in your field that demands less of your time. It's do-able. If you can get down to 40 or 30 hours ideally, you'll have more than enough free time to write.

You can't just quit "to be" a novelist. Being a novelist takes almost a decade of steady work publishing decently, and even then you'll only be able to live on it if you are very very lucky. At best you'll be able to trade on your publications for a university post.

I'm not / wasn't trying to make a point with my writing, just sort of presenting things in a rather extreme or anti-subtle way.

>If you can get down to 40 or 30 hours ideally, you'll have more than enough free time to write.


Wrong. The vast majority of novels you have enjoyed reading were written by people working fewer than 25 hours a week. The outliers (Catch 22 et al.) usually took a decade to write at least.

>Being a novelist takes almost a decade of steady work publishing decently

Wrong. I can name several contemporary authors who are under 35 yet making a living from their writing.

I like that. That's a good way to write, you'll end up saying something even if you didn't intend to at the beginning. Follow your instincts.

Also not OP. Fuck you guys.

OK so this wasn't actually me. Probably from some visual novel but definitely not written by me, the OP.

Here is an actual sample of my writing.

>Mother, crashing through the door, announced, in a tenor very much of her own invention, that she had decided this morning to make pancakes. Although she couldn't claim to have invented them, the pancakes were of her own creation, and, as all creation inevitably is, a labor of love.
>Stumbling over the dog and down the stairs I mumbled an unspecific thanks and, following the odor of delicious pancakes, carried myself into this here kitchen

Can you stop? I made this thread with serious intent, not to make some stupid joke out of it

You should quit regardless.
80 hours? Do you really think that humans are designed to live this way? And for what? The hope that maybe someday you'll work 80 hours a day and earn 4 times the money you're earning now?
Find a less intense job and work your ambitions out.

t. wasted 5 years of my life slaving away as a programmer

Samefagging so hard

Why don't you just love south, Raleigh or charlotte,Baltimore or somewhere in Florida
A big-ish city where you can continue to practice law and live well above the standard of living but without the NYC pressure
Then using the equivalent savings,both time and money wise and write?

Why go extreme and quit law

you got nothing to write about faggot.

unless you do, in which case go ahead.

Sure I do.