The Unbearable Costs of Becoming a Writer

My parents didn’t understand my job. At least, not in its entirety. If asked, they might tell people that their daughter was a writer. They were both avid readers who read my first book and many of my stories; once, when I visited them, I found a newspaper article I’d written stuck to their refrigerator door. On visits, they would occasionally see me working—that is, staring at my computer screen, typing a bit, and staring some more, wrestling with a draft for hours or days. They might be interested in what I was writing, but sometimes it was difficult for them to see it as Work, and they would often mistake it for volunteer labor, a hobby, like the hundreds of stories they knew I’d written growing up. The editorial process, my entire career in publishing, seemed nebulous to them, mostly invisible labor—until I sent them something I’d written that had been published, something they could see and hold and read for themselves.