Now I have a real job and other assorted responsibilities and it is harder to find time to write. I honestly think that class time was productive because it did not involve staring at a monitor. Pen (or pencil) and paper seem to bring out my creativity a lot better than a keyboard.

If it’s an especially high-stress job and you have to take work home, that’s not so good. Same if you’re miserable at it, although some people can use that as inspiration to keep writing, really push themselves to get somewhere.

Strangely enough, I was at my most creative/prolific when I was studying. It wasn’t good stuff, but it was stuff, it was practice. Even if I should have been writing essays or paying more attention in class. Seems I’m at my best when there’s something else I should be doing. Which is not the best way to go about it, really.

For example, right now I could be writing, but I’m typing… this… comment… hmmm…

I’ll, um, see you all later.

I’m going to lean towards saying that muscle-work is better, because you can be rehearsing dialog, exposition, and world-building bits in your head while you move bricks… assuming the muscle-work you do doesn’t become dangerous to you and those around you if you’re a little absent-minded here and there.

BUT… I came from a brain-work job, and found enough leftover creative energy to make a career in comics in my free time.

On a more serious note:
Karl and Guerry talk upthread about being drained or stifled by their professional jobs. I find my (grunt unskilled labor) to be similarly draining (more physically than mentally, but I still have doing anything mental or creative when physically exhausted).

From a pure writing perspective, which do you think is a better day job to have? Something professional or that otherwise requires brainpower? Or something mindless?

In a strange way, thankfully my job does not require much creativity — critical thinking, yes, but no creativity. Therefore I still can get my creative fix after hours (my media of choice is screenplays). But with the creative muse being a fickle mistress, it can be difficult to put pen to blank paper in my limited free time.

Don’t mind my whinging. I’m just out of my writing habit. Sadly it’s been a couple of months since I’ve had a chance to sit down with my scripts.

As a side note, I’ve been distracted by drawing a cartoon for the monthly newsletter for my local SCA group. I figure if some people (who shall remain nameless) can do this on a daily basis, surely I can crank out 12 of these in one year. Four down, eight to go. I firmly blame Howard!

@Karl: My biggest issue was that my job in software engineering uses a lot of creativity, and I’d feel creatively drained. The motivator for getting back to writing though was this: software doesn’t last, most folks don’t understand it and don’t want to, and fiction, well, it has a chance to last…maybe. I couldn’t see a future where someone would say: “Look, this is a collection of Java code your great-great-grandfather wrote!” However, I could see that with some short stories and novels, even if out of print and dead outside the family. As Dan said, you creative urges will get you. Your inner-motivations will find you where you sleep and bug the bejiggers out of you.

Karl:
To some degree I wouldn’t really worry about it–if your creative drive is worth its salt, it will be right back in your face after a week or two of complacency. I find that I can never go more than a week, if even that, without a desperate urge to create. I get very down and depressed if I’m not working on some artistic project or other.

That said, it can be very easy to get burned out by a hard day’s work, especially if your job involves writing. I feel very lucky that I get to spend my days doing what I love, but I have to admit that it does get very hard sometimes to write all day and then go home and force myself to write all night. One of the best ways to overcome this is through simple, dogged determination–I tell myself that I eventually want to drop one of my two jobs, and obviously I’d like novel writing to be the keeper, so I have to stick it out and make it happen. Beyond that, once of the great motivators I’ve found is a weekly writing group–they’re a great way to improve your writing, of course, but they’re also (and often more importantly) a way to make yourself accountable and actually do the work and write. I know that if I don’t get anything new written during the week, I won’t have anything to submit to the group, and then six or seven of my trusted friends will berate me and get me back on track.