The scary choice to rearrange your life for your writing

On taking a leap

Maybe I will have more time to read and write in coffee shops. Who knows!

Very recently, I decided to take a new job. The decision was informed by a number of factors—I will still be a civil-rights lawyer, but I’m both sad to leave my current job and excited for the new one! But I agonized for ages in part for two reasons: the new job offers less money and significantly more time to write. Together, those two factors gave me an unbelievable amount of heartburn.

For one, I feel very guilty accepting less money—particularly if, as part of my calculus, I wanted more time to write. I’m in my fourth year our of law school, and I think I’ve somewhat internalized the expectation that the early years of an attorney’s career are for grinding and for watching your salary continue to increase. So accepting a job with less money and more time off feels almost premature, like taking a step back too early, like giving up too soon. My friends are clerking on the Supreme Court and aiming for partner track at famous top law firms and I’m asking for more time to write my little stories in coffee shops. I’m proud of those stories and I love coffee shops but I can tell you that one is far more lauded at law school events!

(None of these anxious thoughts, by the way, have anything to do with the actual merits of the job. By all accounts my new job will be an excellent one and I’ll get to work with some stellar civil-rights attorneys on serious litigation defending the rights of the most vulnerable in the state of Texas and beyond.)

I’m also a bit scared because until now, my writing has not affected my on-paper, on-LinkedIn career in any way. I wrote my debut in the early mornings and evenings after my job as a federal judicial clerk. I accepted my current job without considering my writing, as I hadn’t yet even queried any agents at that time. I had not yet made any kind of life change related to my writing. This leap will be the first.

One difference is that for the first time, I’ve made some money off of my fiction—not quit your job money, but more than a fifty-dollar-stipend-and-contributor’s-copies money. But it still feels scary to consider that money, and that possibility, when I know that the publishing industry is so fickle. Selling one book today doesn’t mean selling another tomorrow. It feels frivolous in a way I can’t shake—as if I am forgoing important, cold, hard, salaried cash so that I can, I don’t know, try to nab the Guinness World Record for dribbling a ping-pong ball on a boat. Even though I know that my writing is very important to me!

But as my fiancé pointed out, with my current job and upcoming debut, I was working basically a job and a half, and I was getting tired, and I hardly got vacation. And I liked other aspects of the new job. And I love writing much, much, more than I think anyone ever could love even ping-pong ball dribbling. Right now, I want to publish this book and write another one and another one, if I could be so lucky. Very little in life is permanent, anyway. I will continue to be a civil-rights litigator, but it will just look a little different than what I imagined in law school.

Take the leap, my friend

KLC

told me. Take the leap, take the leap, take the leap.

So I did. Wish me luck on how it goes.

Sincerely,

Nina

---

If you’ve taken any kind of leap for your writing, especially if you stepped back from a more intense career, I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

---

---

What I’m Enjoying

• Episode 309 of the podcast Books and Boba, which featured my book deal!

• The viral article on girls in the West Village that I got sent in multiple group chats

• “Target Island,” a gorgeous story by Mariah Rigg ahead of her debut collection Extinction Capital of the World (disclaimer, we went to high school together in Hawai‘i, but the story stands on its own!)