Making Yourself Useful

Last week, I had an experience I had not had for at least 10 years. Someone interviewed me for a corporate job as a writer. I did that work for years, and mostly I loved it. It was so nice to go to an interview and have them take me seriously as a writer again.

Corporate writing is not nearly as challenging, technically, as writing a play or a novel. 9 to 5 is a lot of paperwork and chasing people around to get approvals for the most ordinary announcements. But my career as a corporate writer provided me with a living. It helped me develop my style of writing. And unlike what I do now, it helped me feel like I was useful to the world at large. I had a small part to play for my corporate employers, and I played it as well as I could, every stinking day.

I doubt if I’ll get a job offer, but it was refreshing and validating to be interviewed this way. I know that writing novels and plays is valuable, if only to me. But it’s so hard to get any attention for your work that sometimes it wears you down. Not that I’m going to stop. When covid passes, someday, I’ll be out again at libraries, giving my speeches, promoting my latest work.

But it felt nice at that interview, taking a trip back to a time when all I had to do, to succeed as a writer, was to make myself useful.