Ah, the life of a writer. Has anything been more romanticized?
I will freely admit that when I sold my novel I expected that doing so would change my life in significant ways. And it has -- after all, I'm at home typing this, not at a law firm office, drafting a memo about some patent dispute. And that's the one big actual change -- at least for now, I'm writing as my day job, not what I do at night and on weekends.
I was working full time as a lawyer the whole time I was writing A Cure for Night. It's safe to say I don't recommend the experience. The law is not exactly a flexible profession, and law firms expect you to be on call 24/7. Literally. The book took forever to write; I was working around the clock at one thing or another, not socializing enough, and not feeling like I was able to give anything 100%.
I continued working full-time at the law firm for six months after selling the book, while making the final edits and trying to get book number two off the ground. Now that I had an actual book deal, there were deadlines in place, phone calls I had to make during business hours, etc, and it became impossible for the writing side of things to be relegated to nights and weekends. Moreover, I was working on a case whose trial was postponed by the judge so that it coincided with publication, meaning I would spend the month of pub working 18-hour days in a war room somewhere in Los Angeles.
Finally I asked the Firm if I could go part time, at least through publication. (Whenever a lawyer deals with a law firm's bureaucracy, or when the law firm has bad news to impart, its "the Firm" that makes the decisions, as in: "The Firm believes that requiring associates to bill 2100 hours a year in order to be eligible for a bonus is reasonable."). The Firm, which for reasons that elude me has a lingering reputation as a supportive place to work, at least as major New York law firms go, wouldn't even consider it. There was no way I would consider maintaining the status quo, so I quit, and thus began my life as a full-time writer.
My favorite thing about the firm's response was, after completly ignoring the fact that I'd sold the book for the past six months, the day my resignation was announced two different partners promptly called me up to ask me for the name of my agent, so that they could pass it on to clients who had written novels...
To be continued.
Congrats, Justin! I've been dying to read your book ever since Melissa told me that you had signed your deal. I also tried explaining to her that fancy paper is v. v. v. important. Here's hoping I see you at a book release party or two~
Posted by: Jae Young | August 10, 2008 at 07:13 PM