Iz a Newsletter #3

IZ A STATUS UPDATE: 

I told you I’d be updating this more. The Hole won the Locus Award for Best Short Story (thank you to everyone who voted for me!!), and I would beseech everyone to read/view Sarah Gailey’s speech before announcing the short story winner, because it absolutely hits (pun intended) as a call to action. 

Also, I’ve seen ~*~*~*~cover designs~*~*~*~ for SUBLIMATION now and it’s so fucking exciting. This book is going to look cool as fuck. Excited to do the cover reveal when everything’s finalized.

Also: not personal news, but hell yeah. Based Mamdani win. I was bopping around NYC yesterday (went to the polls with a friend) in the godawful sun, and there was something powerfully literary about the tremendous heat turning to night, heralding the announcement that Cuomo was conceding. Cool day. Cool to see that change is possible. Also my heart goes out to all the thirty-three year olds whose mothers will now be like “So Zohran is going to be MAYOR (hopefully, probably, lol) what have YOU done?” 

IZ WORK: What is Iz working on right now?

• a jolt of inspiration led me to outline a short story that will make everyone mad, which I was tepidly picking away at, but I’m hoping to go sicko mode today and get the bulk of it drafted. Should be about 4k about AI-human relationships in a future where Things Have Gone Weird, and functionally, it’ll be a LLM Discourse Post. So, sorry, if you’re sick of reading about AI. About 20% done here.

• one of my goals this year is to write a script, so…I’m outlining a script. This will also make everyone really mad, and I don’t want to speak more on this, because if I speak, I get in big trouble. About 5% done.

• Poking at Book #3’s Concepts and Themes, not that I plan to write this until late this year or even next year. But, you know. Just for fun. Probably going to be a law firm novel. 2% done.

• Building An Ikea Cabinet. This cabinet has been sitting unassembled for three months and has gone an entire move without being assembled and hopefully I have all the pieces. 0% done, haunting my every waking hour.

IZ CONTENT: Schrodinger's high/low status job, or, Isabel Complaining. 

I did the big serious quitting my lawyer gig late last year. I haven’t really talked about it much, because it feels more like “isabels personal life” than “isabels professional writer life,” although according to precedent vis a vis the ways writers are, the line is woefully blurrry. I’m still barred, and the plan is to maybe go back next year before my accreditation expires, depending on how things play out over the next 12 months. I figured that if there was ever a time in my life to take a big swing, it’s now. (maybe I’ll do a “when to quit your dayjob” post or “day in the life of an author vs attorney” post at some point) 

Please buy my book next year so I don’t have to go back to the law firm, I much prefer being a writer. 

Technically, I can still call myself an attorney! I’m barred and I went to law school and I practiced for a solid few years and I can read a contract and go “yeah, shit’s fucked” or “yeah, shit’s not fucked” and I can read SCOTUS cases and be very depressed about the conservative majority (you can do that if you’re not a lawyer, too, but it’s not the most productive pastime). 

Which is to say, “attorney” is still how I introduce myself to people, because a phenomenon that I’ve been observing over the last year is how random non-book people react differently when I variously introduce myself as a) an attorney, b) an author, or c) an author (with clout and tv related stuff). 

And, generally, the response has gone about: 

And what’s kind of crazy is you can see the way people’s opinions shift from the “Low Status” to the “High Status” column if the conversation unfolds in a way where I end up revealing some of the Random Bullshit about my current situation. The expression on their face changes, they start asking more involved questions than “oh, so do you have a novel?” or “have you written anything I’ve read?” They start telling you about their idea for a book or that they always wanted to write a book but never had the time. They start looking at you like you’re some type of Lottery Winner or some type of guy who can Help Them Get Their Thing Published or Have Insight Into Publishing or TV or they ask if you’re going to move to LA. Spoilers: I am not going to move to LA. 

It’s really weird. I can’t help but be a little resentful when it happens because it really reinforces the dynamic of art and artists only being taken seriously after they’re “successful,” and before that, it’s your Fun Little Hobby that they aren’t going to take seriously and if it’s your only gig, they kind of dismiss you as “oh, vaguely unemployed.” On the flip side, it’s insanely weird to introduce yourself to people as “hi, I’m Isabel and I have a seven figure book deal and a Wikipedia page.” That’s an insane thing to choose as your first impression. So at least for me, there’s no real good answer when I am introducing myself to some random person. 

What’s sort of depressing is what people seem to respect is Money and Television. And I can’t even be mad at that! In the non-writer social circles I run in, most of the people I know IRL are either in tech (WEIRDLY high number of startup founders this year, I think people in my circle are having quarter life crises) or law/business/getting a graduate degree. If a random guy I was talking to at a party had Money and Television, I would also be like “that's crazy man. tell me about how you got the money and television.” But I also don’t want to get into all that with a random stranger! 

Sure, there’s a part of me that likes being the weird guy at a party who is like “haha yeah, check out my zany life full of television options and award nominations,” and it’s also kind of fun to be like “yes. sometimes people get dollars to build dreams. sometimes even people you know. a writer is just some guy at this party,” but there’s a larger part of me that doesn’t really want to get into all of it. Like, c’mon. I’m just here to drink my aperol spritz and hang out and I feel weird dominating a conversation with my bullshit. But I also want people to take me seriously because I crave that mineral (the mineral is being taken seriously and people thinking I’m smart—this is a moral failing of mine, if I’m being honest. If I was closer to reaching enlightenment I wouldn’t give a shit about this, but I do.) 

To the public eye, it seems that being a writer is nothing until it's everything. 

So it’s just easier to say that I’m an attorney. Being an attorney is like that meme song that went around about a year ago on tiktok, “nobody asks you questions if you say you’re an accountant.” If I tell people that I’m in biglaw, and I do leveraged finance transactions, and that I’m taking a year off, then normally nobody really questions it, everyone assumes I am some type of Conventional Normal Smart Guy, and then everyone in the conversation is like “ah yes we are all working professionals in new york city, the metropolis of Many Patagonia Vests.” 

These are champagne problems, though, and it’s just kind of interesting to observe how people’s attitudes change through the conversation when the book stuff gets mentioned. It kind of grinds my gears that creative stuff isn’t seen as “serious” or “respected” unless it’s making cash money, and then after it’s successful everyone is like “omg. the thing is cool. ur cool.” Other than that, the last year has been a very interesting opportunity to see some of our societal biases brought to the forefront.