For the Love of Prose

The Flagship Newsletter

Hello and welcome to Sitting in Silence, the newsletter and podcast about writing, craft, worry, and joy. We’re celebrating three years of community. Thank you for tuning in.

During my corporate law years, I earned somewhere between $85 and $600 per hour. Sure, those are eyewatering figures. But a reminder for the uninitiated, most of that money went into the firm owners’ pockets. Which is not to say that I didn’t clean up. I did.

I was in Cincinnati at the University of Cincinnati Book Festival. Someone asked me why I didn’t hate the practice of law. Was it the money? No. The money was just a stabilizing factor.

I didn’t hate the law because I always knew there was another life for me in the future.

I’ve never hated the practice of law. I learned a lot in my years of working as an attorney. Indeed, I still have my license. I’ll handle your case for the low, low price of $10 million. Kidding.

Yet, I often felt bored at my law office computer.

You know how sometimes an A-list actor will complain about being in a superhero movie that they got paid millions of dollars to appear in? They would have rather been in a small, independent film or on a stage in New York.

That’s what it felt like for me.

The law money was good, but I was almost always bored. But I’m never bored writing. I’ve been wondering lately, why that is.

It turns out, it’s because I like writing. Not just writing in general, but my kind of writing.

Before you think I’m bragging, this wasn’t always the case.

As a young writer, I often felt like I was grinding my gears. My stories made no sense. My characters felt like stick figures. Everything was small and flat.

But I studied and learned how to accentuate what I was good at: drama, humor, and the unexpected.

Every writer has a particular set of skills like that character from the Taken franchise. The key to enjoying your writing is playing to those skills as much as you can.

I’m deep into what is likely the last substantial round of revisions on book four. I’m enjoying it because I love my main character, her view of life, her struggles, and her gumption.

What is something that you love about your writing?

My latest book, The American Daughters, is available here.