For the longest time, I was a writerly “purist”.

When people asked me ‘Are you a full-time writer?’ I wanted to be able to say ‘yes’. That is all I do. I write. I write for a living. Not for me the day job. After a stint in a couple of publishing houses and a city magazine, I quit what I thought was the 9-to-5 life. Yes, TS Eliot was a banker, Kafka worked as a legal clerk, William Carlos Williams was a doctor, and most writers I knew were attached to a newspaper or publication, but I stubbornly would have none of it. So I moved back home to Shillong (rent was unaffordable in Delhi, given the precariousness of being a new freelancer), and waited. A few assignments trickled in, I began expanding my repertoire to “editing”, I pitched ideas, kept an eye open for compelling ‘local’ stories, made an effort to be in touch with various editor friends across the country. It was difficult. But I enjoyed my newfound ‘freedom’, the way the hours were mine, all mine. I could work in pyjamas, outdoors, in the sunshine and, more importantly, when I felt like it. I had no commute. No card to swipe to announce my arrivals and departures. No ‘boss’. No office politics. And write I did: reams of (mostly terrible) poetry, the first few glimmerings of stories in Boats on Land . I was getting to know Shillong all over again, after having left it, years ago, for boarding school, and making new friends. The group of “Shillong poets” with their gorgeous verse, and easy laughter and lovely sohiong wine. I travelled when I could to Kolkata and Delhi; it was a quiet life.

After a year, I left to study art history in London, and stayed on in the UK. Even if I wanted to work in the country, it was near-impossible. Still caught in the grip of economic recession, where ‘creative’ work tended (as it does even in India) to circulate among people who knew each other, who would give me a writer’s job? I was offered unpaid work for exposure. Although exposure, as we all know, doesn’t pay the bills. So I retreated, back into my writerly shell. This manuscript, I told myself, needs to make me rich. I fretted, and fussed. What should I write? Where must I set my novel? It was easier, back in Shillong, to think it was viable. This freelance writer life. But in another country, without the backing of family, friends, or a network of people in the industry, it was terribly tough. Also, this is when I noticed it: that placing pressure on your craft changes your relationship with it. For me, writing had always been a process of discovery, of myself, of what literature could aspire to, and achieve. Within this situation, though, with no financial support coming in from anywhere apart from writing (with the added strain of earning in rupees and spending in pounds), any word document I opened came loaded with a single question: how much money could I make out of this? It was not the way I wished to be a writer.

Returning to India in 2014, I tentatively began looking around for jobs. I was still apprehensive. How would I manage it? The day job along with the writing. I had two books out, but would this mean I’d never have the time to write another? By some stroke of luck, a friend I’d been in touch with, who worked at a liberal arts university in Delhi, asked me to apply. And I did. And I got the job. Teaching critical writing twice a week to a group of young postgraduates. I needn’t have been concerned about re-entering the 9-to-5 life because academia works to its own rhythms and calendars. How immensely fortunate. Immensely lucky. I found a space of intellectual engagement, literary discussion, scholarly quietness. And alongside, time to write. Oddly enough, with this ‘day job’ came ‘freedom’.

A few months ago, when I opened a new word document, to begin the novella I’m working on, I couldn’t help but ask myself, ‘Do I dare write this book? It’s… weird and experimental.’ Then I realised it didn’t matter. That I could write what I wished to write. My livelihood was no longer dependent on whether I sold foreign rights, or ‘made it’ in the West, or whether foreign publishers adored me, or whether, even in the domestic market, my books would do phenomenally well. One wishes for all this, of course. Who wouldn’t like their books to be successful? But the writing of a book now is lightened, untainted by the quest for it to bolster my bank account.

Is this the less-adventurous route? Perhaps. But also, I’ve come to realise, that everything else you do around your writing — the teaching, the discussions, even the commuting — tends to feed into it. That variety, and experience, beyond the desk, could enrich your work, rather than wrest you away from it. Sometimes, to give up is to gain.

Janice Pariat is the author of Seahorse; @janicepariat

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