Member-only story
Day Job? I Wish!
A cautionary tale from a novelist who shouldn’t be writing full time
While I was living in New York in my early 20s — still a few years before Facebook and Twitter and Meetup — I’d sometimes browse the Craigslist activity-partner listings hoping to connect with other aspiring writers. The interactions that followed essentially amounted to platonic first dates, which could feel a little awkward when meeting up with straight men. The most memorable of these was Remy, who sent me a link to another Craigslist ad he’d posted advertising a corpse under “free stuff.” Ideal for anatomical research, he wrote. Please arrange for pick-up as soon as possible. I laughed, uneasily. It was only a joke, and anyway I was definitely going to be meeting him in a public place.
Remy lived in a studio apartment in the East Village. He told me he’d quit his job to focus on his writing, and in the meantime he was living off his credit cards. We chatted amiably over drinks, but inwardly I was shrieking I’m sorry if this sounds judgmental but quitting your job was a TERRIBLE IDEA. My God, the rent he must have been paying living solo in Manhattan! I never did say what I was thinking, but there isn’t a doubt in my head that the older, wiser version of Remy would agree with me.
