by Barbara A. Barnett

When writers are asked about their process, a common question is, “How do you write?” My answer? That’s an easy one: I just start typing.

Well, ok, maybe not that easy. I get an idea first, and then I start typing.

But seriously, there’s more nuance to it than that. I could get into how I approach theme and plot and character and structure and blah blah blah. Those things are important, and I recommend giving them some thought, but I only just finished a masters degree program like a week ago, so the last thing I feel like doing right now is engaging in an intellectual analysis of, well, anything. My brain is tired. And that got me thinking, which totally doesn’t help with the brain tiredness, but did lead to a realization:

I got my masters degree to help me write.

No, it wasn’t a writing program. My shiny new degree is a masters in library and information science (MLIS). So how the hell does that help me as a writer? Well, it goes like this:

Once upon a time, I worked in development (aka fundraising) for non-profits, primarily as a grant writer. While I liked many of the people and the organizations I worked for, the work itself made me miserable. Fundraising and my personality type were not a good fit. And writing grant proposals all day often left me too mentally exhausted for fiction writing, and that just made me more miserable.

Also once upon a time, I briefly escaped from fundraising for two years to work on a cataloging project for a music library—a temporarily funded project, alas, or else I would have loved to have stayed there. I enjoyed the job, and it didn’t sap all of my writing energy. I cranked out my first-ever novel draft on my lunch breaks. But trying to find another library job after that usually resulted in one of three problems: 1) the job required an MLIS, which I didn’t have; 2) if the job didn’t require an MLIS, I was often deemed overqualified (“Don’t you think you’ll be bored?” was an actual question at one interview); or 3) they looked at my resume and went, “Ooo, you have grant writing experience! We could use a grant writer!”

So after wavering about it for several years, I finally dove in and got my MLIS. On the down side, working toward the degree meant three years of more mental exhaustion and getting even less fiction writing done. But now that I’m done, I think the upside is going to prove worth it: I work in an orchestra library now. I enjoy my job, I work with interesting people, and every day I get to listen to amazing musicians. But most importantly, the type of work I’m doing doesn’t drain my fiction writing energy the way grant writing did. Many days I come home energized instead.

So my takeaway from all this babbling is this: how you write isn’t always about getting words down. Sometimes it’s about looking at other aspects of your life and figuring out if there are changes you can make that will improve your ability to get those words down. For me, that involved a short-term sacrifice of writing time so that, later down the road, I could dive back into fiction without regularly beating the crap out of my mental well-being. I’ve only been done with grad school all of a week at this point, granted, but if my summer breaks were any indication, my brain is going to be a lot more cooperative during my writing time now that it isn’t getting its ass kicked on a daily basis.

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Barbara A. Barnett is a writer, musician, orchestra librarian, Odyssey Writing Workshop alum, SFWA member, coffee addict, wine lover, bad movie mocker, and all-around geek. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Shimmer, Daily Science Fiction, and Flash Fiction Online. You can find Barbara online at www.babarnett.com or babbling as a member of the Star-Dusted Sirens writing group at stardustedsirens.wordpress.com, where this post originally appeared.