I quit! Octavia Butler, Jim Henson, and Pam Slim invade my head.

Octavia Butler.

Do you know her? She was a gifted science fiction writer. In sci-fi circles Octavia Butler is well-known for her feminist science fiction novels, but you may not have heard of her unless you’re into that. Jenni is a huge fan and introduced me to her work.

Butler, according to this wikipedia article, described herself as “comfortably asocial—a hermit in the middle of Seattle—a pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.”

We were in Seattle this past week (falling in love with yet another city) and spent huge chunks of our time at the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and Experience Music Project. We’re all sci-fi and music geeks in our family. Apparently Paul Allen is, too, because he founded the museum and owns most of the exhibits. It’s too awesome to review here. If you’re in Seattle, take a day and explore that place.

One of the best uses of video and flat screen tech is in museums. The ability to archive interviews and call them up whenever you want is a bit of science fiction itself. I used to study Spielberg’s TV work this way in New York. Better than a lecture any day.

So in the museum there’s a video interview with Octavia Butler. Is she talking about how to write sci-fi? No. Is she talking about feminism in modern literature? Nope. Is she discussing the merits of handwritten versus typewritten manuscripts? Negative.

She talked about her decision to leave her full-time job and just decide to be a writer. This caught my attention right away.

Butler was living in Los Angeles and had published three novels, which were fairly popular and selling well. However, she was working as a temp in the laundry of a hotel to pay her rent. Her boss had just asked her to stay on permanently and she was considering it. Who knew how her writing career would go, anyway?

At the same time, she attended a sci-fi convention in Phoenix. She went away struck by the massive popularity of modern sci-fi novels (including her own). She knew she was in her right world there.

She turned down the laundry promotion. In fact, she quit altogether.

She decided that she was going to be a Writer. That was it, a moment of clarity in Phoenix and she knew what she needed to be doing. She did it.

Now, her books weren’t suddenly making her a fortune simply from her wishing it, so she had to do other things to earn a living. She started speaking and conducting workshops. She also started living very frugally and lived that way until her death in Seattle in 2006.

I took away a lot from this interview.

The first misconception that I (and I think a lot of people) make is that best-selling writers are wealthy. Some are, but not most. Just having a book or two on the shelf doesn’t suddenly afford you a Malibu beach house.

The other major concept I glommed onto wasn’t really new to me, but it helped cement a belief I have about life and work. It also came out of the amazing Jim Henson exhibit at the same museum. Henson has been one of my heroes since childhood. A microscopic look at his early work (pre-Muppets) paired with the Octavia Butler interview solidified some thoughts I’ve been having this year about my own work.

Doing the thing you love isn’t always enough. Doing other things to pay your bills isn’t always fulfilling. Combine the two and you’ve got a way to keep doing what you love for a very long time.

Octavia Butler quit her job because she decided she was going to be a Writer, once and for all. She knew what it meant for her (a frugal existence), but it was so important she couldn’t do it any other way.

Does that mean you should quit your job tomorrow? I don’t know. Only you can say. Or Pam Slim might have a few thoughts on that. She knows a thing or two about it.

The answer for me is that quitting my job was the best thing I ever did. I’m not rich, I don’t know Bill Gates, my credit cards are being paid down very slowly, and my family lives very frugally.

However, the opportunities that quitting my job has opened up have been amazing. Also, the fact that I don’t have the fallback of a regular paycheck has pushed me to do things I wouldn’t have done otherwise.

I’ve found that I’ve had to be more creative about finding ways to earn money (and look closer at spending it). Then again, I have this amazing freedom to accept opportunities to earn the money.

I often think about my decision to leave a really, really good job to be independent. It’s been almost two years. As much as I think about it, I haven’t regretted it.

It’s so important, I can’t think of doing it any other way.