"I got the advice that if you wanted to be a writer, you had to live life. The writers I admired were travelers … They had affairs and adventures and they just lived life fully, and in their work you could see the depth and expansiveness of their experiences. I spent the first decade or more of my adult life having jobs that didn’t mean a lot to me, but I collected a paycheck while I focused on writing. I met my husband and traveled through France, lived in New York, got divorced and traveled Europe.
In the meantime, I kept sending things to journals and finished novels to agents, but what I wasn’t doing, which I am still paying for, was building a career as a writer. What I’ve learned is that you need to be meeting people, and going to certain schools and conferences and residencies, and rubbing elbows with the literary community. The people who get their work published are part of that community.
I think one of the myths around work and career is, ‘Follow your dreams, and the money will follow.’ But the reality is you also have to be doing some practical things. I think in most industries, there’s an aspect that is not about the dream but about the work and the connections. And not neglecting those. Striking a balance between them.
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