Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: We’ve been talking as an editorial staff this year about the range of things writers do to pay the bills. Obviously, many teach in colleges or universities, training the next generation of writers (and many more want that kind of position!)—but others opt for alternative careers. They employ their communication, content creation, and project management skills; their knowledge of design; their attention to detail; their interest in helping others; etc., in venues outside the academy. We’d like to highlight some of them in a new blog series on writers’ day jobs.
Our first feature is on Steven D. Schroeder:
How would you describe what you do for your day job?
My job title is Creative Content Manager. I provide creative strategy, project management, account relations, and content writing for a small marketing firm serving financial clients (investment, insurance, and banking). I write everything from website copy to social media posts, informational articles to print brochures.
I don’t have an MFA and was never going to succeed as a teacher or in academia, so this is a good professional outcome for me. Before this job, I contracted as a resume-writing team leader for nearly a decade, and before that I worked for a year after graduation as assistant manager of a video store, back when those were a thing.
What do you enjoy about that job, and what are some of its detractions?
The best aspects of the job are that it lets me exercise my writing muscles in ways that are different from poetry but still engaging, and it offers a good work-life balance so I have the time and energy for that poetry writing. (Work-life balance can vary a lot in marketing jobs, so do your research.) It’s not an overly exciting or entertaining job, but that suits me fine.
Before COVID switched us to full-time remote work, I would have said my least favorite aspect was the daily rush-hour commute. Now, it’s probably the dependence on group videoconferences for hourlong discussions of issues that could be resolved in less than a minute by email. Also, marketing for the world of finance is an ironic occupation for someone who skews anticapitalist.
How, if at all, does your day job inform—or relate to—your writing life?
As you might guess from my last answer, my poetry often draws on corporate bureaucracies and our collective obsessions with money and profit. I don’t necessarily have to deal with all that absurdist fodder on a daily basis at work, but I’m always at least adjacent to it. Going the other direction, my creative side-hustle doesn’t inform my job that much. I gave a copy of my first book as a gag gift during a Christmas party, and one of my coworkers proclaimed I’m famous because I have a Wikipedia entry, but that’s about it.
What creative projects are you working on right now?
My third full-length book, which revolves around dystopian and apocalyptic social and political themes, is currently seeking a publisher. Having more-or-less finished that manuscript, I’m happily writing whatever new poems I want, without worrying yet about how they might fit together—everything from creepy fairy-tale prose poems to iambic tetrameter blank verse based on computer games. After a slow, grindy couple of years, I’m on a lucky hot streak of writing, and I don’t take that for granted.
Steven D. Schroeder’s second book, The Royal Nonesuch (Spark Wheel Press, 2013), won the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award from Southern Illinois University. He edits the online poetry journal $ (www.poetrycurrency.com). His poetry is available from The Cincinnati Review, New England Review, Crazyhorse, Michigan Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, and DIAGRAM, and has also been featured in city parks, public transportation, and business waiting rooms.
Thank you for the interesting questions, and I’m looking forward to seeing the series develop!