Day jobs

Nobody wants to be that cliche who claims to be an actor/writer/director/poet/god knows what when their real job has just been working the same random retail or restaurant job for 10 years. In some parts of the country there are career waiters, or people who start as an underling at a retail store and then end up managing the whole thing. There is nothing wrong with that. But you don't want to be the person claiming to be something you're not, when it's obvious to everyone that it's never gonna happen.

So for writers especially, we get assistant jobs. Writress is on hiatus from her show. She has a job waiting for her when it comes back, she just hasn't heard if it's been picked up for another season yet. She doesn't want to burn through all her savings, but she wants to have some time to write (which she didn't have when working 14 hour days on the show) and she wants to be able to come back to Boston with me when I have two weeks off in August. Plus, some apartments might have issue with renting to us if one of us is unemployed.

Studio temp places seem to put her info in a database, but she's not sure if she can get enough/any work through that. She doesn't want to apply for jobs that want a one year commitment, because she may be going back to her old job in September or October.

I suggested that she just get a regular summer job working at a store or something. Since she has her show likely coming back, it's not like she'll inadvertently become a career retail worker at Pottery Barn. As it is now, she can have flexible hours to write, get a bit of money, not have the stress, and possibly even get an employee discount on things she might want. Plus, it's a good way to meet some people who aren't necessarily entertainment industry, and therefore gain some useful insight or character inspiration.

So really, until we start getting paid to write, there is no one right way to go about doing things. I think you need to just take stock of your specific situation, and make the best decision from there. At the moment for Writress, the best thing she could do to help further her writing career may be to get a job that has nothing to do with entertainment.