what do Evil Wizards DO all day?

[Keralen]

Okay, imaginative people. It's not enough to sit at the top of a creepy old tower with bats and ravens flying around, emitting bursts of eerie light and spine-chilling noises (the tower, the bats, the ravens, you, whoever), Meddling With Things That Man Was Not Meant To Wot Of. Wot exactly is it that Evil Sorcerers actually DO?

[SJHigbee]

Fiddle with their grimoires, of course!

NICE wizards just read them respectfully...

[Greybeard]

Eat, sleep, defecate, same as everyone else.

Study arcane arts with a view to corrupting them.

Pull the heads off peasants.

Communicate with Evil Underwizards by mystical means.

Hobbies.

Paperwork. You try getting a permit to erect a hundred-foot-takl one-room tower made of glass.

[darkbow]

Hmm, well the main one in my Kobalos Trilogy has spent the last two hundred years trying to bring about the "end times." That takes a lot of political maneuvering, as well as more than a dose of magic here and there, so most of that has kept him busy. And that's not counting the minor rebellion he had to put down, the missing prodigal he's been hunting, and the day-to-day running of a kingdom. Sheesh, an evil wizard never gets any sleep!

[wicked]

Freelance work.

Compose rejection letters, or magic holographic cubes for the ones who can't read, to the local warlords who didn't make an acceptable bid for services.

Select the top two bidders, and inform them the other has offered more. Wait for the bribes to pour in. Work for both.

Tend the orchid garden in the south tower.

Write poetry.

Create a cure for a rare plague.

Unleash said plague on the populace in an attempt to dissuade the inlaws from making their annual month long visit.

[Greybeard]

In general, Evil Wizards would do whatever others of their sociopolitical class do. In a pseudo-Medieval setting they would govern the serfs, manage their own estates, collect taxes, judge court cases, hunt, engage in power politics.

Put the wizard in the setting you've created and you'll find there's plenty for him to do. If a wizard is employed by a lord to be a court wizard, then he would have few responsibilities beyond research and possibly teaching.

In a modern setting, the wizard - evil or not - may need a 9-5 job.