Iz a Newsletter #5

Time 

ATTORNEY (third year associate at a T50 law firm, practicing mostly leveraged finance, some mergers and acquisitions + random corporate stuff) 

AUTHOR (full time, trying my best to do as much work and selling as much stuff before the first book comes out) 

8:00 AM 

Wake up! Time to scroll on my phone. There’s about five million emails that I received overnight. Some of them are from a partner working after I fell asleep, asking me to do some Tasks, some of them are from a junior giving me Things to Review, some of them are from local counsel being like hey man here’s our stuff can you give us more Items. I fire off some “Will do!” emails to the partner and look at Posts instead. 

I’m awake but J isn’t. I scroll on my phone. I check my emails—mostly nothing, a couple of translation related things for short stories. I make a note to email them back later. I go over what I want to do today and read a book (shoutout Libby). 

9:00 AM 

Shower, one last look at my emails, quickly turning a document that will take sub-ten-minutes to do, fire off some emails so that the juniors can flip some docs / complete some tasks while I’m in transit. I’m out the door. 

J’s awake. I get up and make my coffee. J gives me shit about the keurig. I acknowledge the sub-par-ness of the keurig. I make some sort of Breakfast Food Item (rice…and egg!). I think about writing. I don’t actually write anything. 

10:00 AM 

Arrive at the office in midtown. I get a mediocre office coffee and get to work. Emails, turning documents, lots of typing. So many ancillary documents… So so many… I email back the local counsel and everyone else. Just imagine that every ten minutes throughout this day I am sending some emails. It is literally that many emails. I’m not joking. 

My editor emails me about looking at some covers (spoiler alert: the SUBLIMATION cover is pretty close to final, and eeeee it’s so exciting!!). I throw on non-pajama clothing and we talk about covers. Carl sends an email confirming what we talked about and I email back, and then send some of the other emails I need to send. I reflect on the fact that despite being a freelancer, I am still out here sending emails. 

11:00 AM 

I get stuck on a thing and message the senior associate on the deal about Hey Man How do I Do This. We talk for a bit, and then I get back to working on documents. In between working I message my friends on discord. 

Shower. Working from home means that I shower at really random times. I get to work on The Draft. When I’m writing a novel, I try to get about 1.5k words done a day but when I’m outlining or working on something shorter, this goes out the window and It Is What It Is. 

12:00 PM 

Grab lunch from the cafeteria. It’s busy enough that I take lunch back to my desk. I didn’t eat breakfast so I’m very psyched about eating lunch. 

I check my submission status for various short stories. I contemplate quitting writing forever. 

Work. Another coffee. Lying on the floor. More work. Type type type type type. 

1:00 PM 

Meeting with the client. I keep my camera off and take notes to send to the rest of the team after the meeting. 

I contemplate some sort of lunch snack. I harass J (who has a real job, but mostly works from home) a little bit, but then they have a meeting and become Unharassable. I do more writing. 

2:00 PM 

A coworker comes by and asks if I want to get coffee. We get coffee with one of the partners, and it’s a nice break from work. Then I go back to emails, docs, etc. 

I take a break from writing to work on a newsletter or podcast stuff or one of the random projects I’m working on. A lot of this stuff doesn’t directly lead to $, but it’s probably upstream of something useful. Or it’s just fun to do. 

3:00 PM 

Internal team meeting for one of the deals I’m on. We run through the deal checklist. Closing is next week so people, including me, are getting nervous. Agree to a timeline for things getting done. 

Writing. My agent calls and we talk about Deals and Film and such for about half an hour and then it goes off the rails into some random topic.

4:00 PM 

Work. Deal with the foreign counsel again. Brace myself for more emails overnight. 

I give up on writing and experience social media instead. I do a little bit of Accounting and Money Things as well. 

5:00 PM 

Work. (also looking at Posts, and messaging people). 

Writing….again!! 

6:00 PM 

I start packing up. I contemplate whether I want to cook dinner or get takeout. I look at how much work I’ve done and decide that if I do a couple more hours, I can get the firm to pay for dinner. I order takeout from the Good Japanese Place next door, and crunch a couple more docs. 

I start bugging J about dinner and what we want to eat. Call my mom. Start prepping dinner. Get distracted from prepping dinner. Spend way too long reading about publishing and people’s debut experiences and freak myself out and distract myself. 

7:00 PM 

Grab the takeout from next door, go home. Enjoy the brief public transit interlude where I am Free From Emails. Change, eat dinner, watch food youtube, message people, check my socials, decompress. Email people back. 

J finishes work and we make dinner. 

8:00 PM 

A little more work. Read a book. Work on writing stuff and a little more lawyer stuff. Call my mom. 

J and I eat dinner. Kind of late, but that’s life. J cons me into watching TV by putting something interesting on. 

9:00 PM 

A couple more emails. Scroll reddit. 

TV, hanging out, pretending we’re going to do something productive and not doing it. 

10:00 PM 

Last couple dregs of work. Watch a bunch of youtube. Listen, I never said I spent my free time WELL. 

A little more writing or emails, cleaning up the kitchen, miscellaneous life tasks. J does a little more of this than me, sometimes. 

11:00PM 

Getting ready for bed. I contemplate cleaning stuff up but I’m mad about how little time I have that isn’t poisoned by work, so I don’t clean up and decide it can be a weekend problem. 

Getting ready for bed. Sometimes a little more writing because I’m a freak. Otherwise I play stardew valley or something like that. 

12:00AM

I scroll for another hour after this. I go to sleep around one AM. 

I look at posts. I go to sleep a little after midnight.