I walked away from BigLaw to write science fiction

What does life look like for me now?

It's been a bit over a month since I stopped working as a lawyer. So, how is the new career going? In short: well. The longer answer is more complicated.

Below I write about 1) what's going well, 2) what challenges I'm facing, and 3) some general personal updates.

If you're more interested in the struggles of a self-employed writer (haha) skip the first section below (“What’s going well”). And if you want a tl; dr, just skip all the writing and look at the pictures. If you enjoy the post, please comment. If you hate the post, please comment! Just comment.

What's going well:

• Planning and outlining the novel: I've really enjoyed using the snowflake method to develop my story. Starting with a one sentence summary of the whole book, I expanded that sentence to a paragraph, and that paragraph to a page, and that page to several pages. Then I made a list of all the scenes I anticipate writing, and have finally begun fleshing out the first few scenes.

  • Below is a blurred out screen shots of my scene list so far.

• Experimenting with new writing forms: I've been taking a creative writing class at a community college nearby. In addition to being a good way to get outside of my house, I've been pushed to work on different types of creative writing. In the last few weeks, I wrote several poems of various forms such as haiku, haibun, photo poems, and others. I submitted one of my poems to the college's literary magazine, and it was accepted for publication. I'll share the poem here, once the magazine goes into print. I also wrote a poem about a river I once waded through in honor of Earth Day and read it at an Earth Day themed poetry event.

  • Here's a picture of a beautiful study spot at Skyline College, where I've been taking classes.

• Building up writing habits and routines: This goal is definitely a work in progress, but I've made a valiant effort in developing some habits that put me in a good mindset for a productive writing sessions. One of my new habits is the act of tracking my time in a time tracking software. This habit is a remnant of my training as a lawyer. For years, I was required to undergo the mind-numbing torturous task of tracking my time in six-minute increments.  But now that I'm self-employed, having a sense of where all my time goes is a great way to check if I'm using my time wisely and figure out how to build in more efficiency. I expect to develop a better understanding of how my time is used as I continue tracking over the next several months, and I'll share them here once I have a sense of those trends.

  • Here’s a blurred out screenshot of my tracked time on TogglTrack from a couple weeks ago.

• Getting exercise and sleep: Since I quit lawyering, I feel like I finally have the time to workout regularly. I've used Peloton every single weekday since March 18. Combined with the ballet classes I'm taking at Skyline, my heart, muscles, and brain are in a much better state than they were just four weeks ago. My baseline blood pressure is lower. I sleep much much better. My skin is improved. My hormones are balanced.

• Tom’s support: I have basically smashed my former identity as a well-paid, high-power litigator to create an entirely new identity as an artsy-type. My husband has not batted an eyelash about it. He loves that I’m pursuing what I love. What a stud.

What's not going well:

• Family acceptance: Some members of my family are having a hard time with my career change. They’ll come around eventually, I think.

• My new career is misunderstood: Some well-meaning friends and family have a hard time seeing my new job as real. This is not “fun-employment.” It is self-employment. I am not retired. I am not on sabbatical. I am not a stay-at-home-mom. Basically every other role that is easier for people to grasp than a career in novel-writing has been unintentionally added next to my name as a career title. I have a lot of empathy for this. It's really ok. I'm not mad about it. And I have been gently correcting my friends, which they have accepted without question. But it is a little disappointing sometimes that the correction is required.

  • Capitalism has ossified the rigid lines of what a traditional job means so much that people really can't understand why pursuing art would be considered a real job. It's no one's fault. It's just the perception that has been created by the economic system we’ve chosen as a society.  The work I'm doing doesn't having any economic value currently, and may never have any real economic value. And so it appears like totally frivolous conduct in the eyes of capitalism. That's the mindset we've all been trained to have when someone spends time working on improving their art. But it's still disappointing.

  • If I quit my job to found a tech startup, people wouldn't conclude that I've "retired." Tech startups often fail, many times founders work for months—sometimes years—with no pay, hoping their sweat equity will someday pay off. And then they often fail. But the founder will have learned a lot in those years about how to run a business and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. It's no different with trying to be a novelist. I'm trying to do something that doesn't pay me anything at the moment, has the potential to earn a lot if I get lucky and if I have an ounce of talent, but it may not. In fact, it's much more likely that it will not. But even if this novel never publishes, or no one wants to read it, I'll have learned how to be a better novel-writer, and that should be good enough for my first attempt. But being a failed tech founder is still hailed as an accomplishment in our world, and a "failed" novelist isn't. That is sad.

• Battling the success mindset: Sometimes the cynicism about a writing career can be overwhelming. Yes, I know the odds. But I love writing so much, I don’t care if I fade into obscurity. Which will probably happen.

• I have the typical amount of self-doubt and desire for perfection as any artist.

• I feel so behind. I haven't been reading literary journals and perfecting my voice all these years. To the contrary, I've been mangling any creative voice I have with all the strictures and requirements of technical legal writing.

Life updates:

• My kid is doing really well at daycare. But the daycare is closing for an entire month in July. We’re putting together some vacations and getting grandparents to help.

• Our dryer is broken. We forgot to update one car's registration on time, so now we can’t renew online and I have to go to the DMV next week. Adulthood. There’s always something.

• My husband has recently rediscovered his love of playing the drums. So now we have an electronic drum set in our living room. It definitely screws with our home decor aesthetics and cuts into my kid’s play space. But Zakir is not complaining, so why should I?

That’s all for now. More next Thursday. Thanks for reading. Leave a comment!