Day Job, Writing Job. What’s the dif?
Yeah, that’s me. The one in the skirt. Once upon a time, my day job when not writing was professional dancer. I suppose now you’d call me a professional voyeur. After thirty years as a shrink, and far fewer as a writer, I know how sloppy, changeable and unpredictable people can be. I’m more than a bit addicted to the messy mistakes and misguided heroic actions of my fellow humans.
Characters mostly do as I wish, psychotherapy patients, alas, do not. Fiction provides me a delicious place to linger, to craft and mold human foibles, dare I say; to control the uncontrollable.
In some interviews about my books (and at ALL dinner parties) I’m asked about the correlation of my ‘day job’ to my ‘writing job’. The questions range from the obvious to the slightly less obvious, particularly with regard to my latest novel Dawg Towne which is quite character-driven (I like to joke that Dawg Towne is really a collaboration between Dorothy Parker and your friendly neighborhood veterinarian). Did I cull from my patients’ lives for my book? No way. Does being a therapist make me particularly attune to the human condition? I’d venture to say, nope. I honestly don’t think I’m any more ‘in touch’ than the writer whose day job is full-time parenting, who scrambles to steal rare child-free moments every day when their brain is functional and they can write with a passion and intensity that makes their work zing. Or the barista who observes an endless stream of humanity, the entitled and the humble, and understands them deeply through their caffeinated choices. Or the construction worker-writer, dog walker-writer, florist-writer, dentist-writer, soldier-writer, and yeah…dancer-writer. There is grist for the writer’s mill in all occupations, each moment ripe with content in a working day.
I’ve always loved lists about famous writers and their day jobs. I found solace in them for the many years I was an unpublished writer, and I still get a kick out of them four published books later. Particularly the day jobs that seem completely non-writerly; William Carlos Williams — who chose to continue his practice in family medicine in Rutherford, NJ throughout his entire brilliant, poetic career. Octavia Butler — potato chip inspector, dishwasher, telemarketer until her incredible talent was finally recognized in 1979. Frank McCourt — teaching those smartypants Stuyvesant High School students for 30 years, who always claimed teaching, while depriving him of writing time, is what made him the writer he was meant to be.
All writers have deep curiosity about the world and people around them. All writers are keen observers, or should try to be. All writers have something to see and something to say. If we didn’t, what would be the point of writing? Working in worlds outside the fictional ones we conjure helps keep our words fresh and authentic. I think if all I did was write, write, write, I’d get really stale. And possibly quite bored.
So I’m happy I have my day job. But let’s set the record straight: Being a shrink doesn’t grant me any special privileges. It is being a human that does.
