presents “Two Voices” – a discussion about writing
by 2 writers, Alfred Brown and Anh Thi
(female) ANH
I’m a lawyer – per day job. As with anything, it was a journey to get to the lawyering part. Before that, I taught English at a junior high school. Before that, I dipped my toe in at workshops at East West Players. Then I went on to get my Masters in Professional Writing at USC.
Writing is what I wanted to do. It is the ultimate form of expression for me. It’s a thought that comes to life, a way to give me space to be myself, and a tool to help others give expression to themselves. For a day job, ultimately lawyering was the best fit because it involved reading and writing.
so I went to school to study it.
(male) ALFRED
Currently, I’m a program manager / business analyst in software, with shades of engineering/development. How I got there was unexpected.
Pre-6th grade: For English, we had vocabulary assignments were we had to create sentences using a list of words. I think we had to actually use context to prove we knew each word; otherwise, we could just write “___ is a word in my vocabulary list.”
Well, I knew the word, and making a dictionary was boring, so I thought I’d write a little story. If the words were “cafeteria,” “handkerchief,” and “kindergarten.”
I’d write:
The man and woman were eating next to each other at the cafeteria. She wiped her mouth with her handkerchief and dropped it for him to pick up. Just then, the man remembered he had to pick his son up from kindergarten.
Thus the story was dictated by the choice and order (alphabetical) of the words. I remembering liking this challenge, and made an otherwise extremely boring assignment more interesting. I never paid much attention to the fact I did this, never considered it writing, in fact mostly forgot about it, but many years later my mother ran into a teacher’s aide who graded my vocabulary assignments (I think from 2nd grade), and she said she always enjoyed reading my assignments most, because of these little narratives.
6th grade (circa ’92): My friend was into role playing games, the paper kind as well as video games. For a paper version we were going to make, he had some ideas for some cool weapons. I remember mostly planning for these games, far more than ever playing them, because that required far less cooperation from everyone.
He wanted some kind of back story to the items. With little more than the name of the item, such as “kraken boots”— I’d come up with a pretty elaborate back story. That’s when I first got feedback on my writing, and he was amazed that I came up with them immediately and pretty much effortlessly. That’s when I knew I wanted to write, or be a writer.
Junior high (’93-’94): I kept writing after the project with my friend fizzled, mostly the beginnings of stories I never finished.
I did a little journaling even, and in that journal I wrote that I was really worried about the apocalypse (I mostly blame those Time Life commercials or books on mystics and aliens that said we’re all going to die soon, so better read up about it).
But I thought about it while I did. I thought about what it would mean, namely, pain and disappointment. I know that was pretty dark view of the future even back then, because, well I have the writing to prove it.
High school (‘94-‘98): I started writing plays, teleplays (spec and pilot), short stories, vignettes, poetry, articles for my school newspaper, letters to science magazines (that never got published), and more.
But I was even more sure that writing was a bad idea, as more than a diversion, and diversions were pretty bad too. I was convinced that science and math were the way to go, artists die penniless and unknown, scientists and engineers had jobs and families. And I realized I was good at math and science, and the theoretical stuff about physics in the science magazines I was reading captured my imagination, at least more than anything else science/math. So I thought I’d go to college and become a physics major.
Undergraduate (’98-’03): I started as a physics major, but it wasn’t instantly quantum mysteries and the nature of the universe. It was instead a lot of very boring math. Perhaps I could have slogged through it, but I discovered something (let’s just reference it as the Thing) that made me not care so much about the fact that what I was drawn to (writing, art, music, all creative expression) wouldn’t make me money, and that freed me to do it even more.
I had taken an elective in an art class, The History of Film, with a professor which really made me look at art from an intellectual point of view that was really exciting. And the math just got more boring, especially with the Thing. So, I switched to Film, though I know it was exactly what my high school self would have warned me about, but, again, I was doing the Thing that made not care so much.
And I found I could do the Thing, my own creative expression, and get A’s in my art classes very easily. I was nearly done with my four years, when I met a woman at a coffee shop where there was a poetry reading.
She turned out to be a psychopath, and everything changed. I lost my parent’s financial support, missed my finals, had to do another year to finish, lost my apartment. Only once I had nothing to give her, no money, no place to live, only then, when I tried to break it off, did she not cry and beg me to stay.
‘03-’06: I started on the floor of my college friend’s house. Sleeping in the area between the kitchen and living room still doing the Thing. They like to remind me that they only took me in because my parents would buy them an Xbox. I eventually moved up to garages. During this time, my jobs included retail, food delivery, low-level IT. My high-school self was right, a Visual Arts degree was pretty worthless. The rest of my time was doing creative endeavors and the Thing.
‘07-‘08: Well, first I had to move back home with my parents, because of yet another life-altering experience, not one I think I could have expected. I wallowed for about a year or so, not really leaving my bed for more than a little while at a time. Doing the Thing was pretty infrequent, as was creative endeavors, as was doing pretty much anything.
‘08-‘11: Then, my father, who was Computer Science faculty at a university, helped me get a poorly paying job there that at least was a good resume builder and related to the IT I did before. I worked there for about a year, then started my masters at that university (mostly paid for thanks to my father’s job, but I probably should have done an MBA instead of getting it in writing), and then expanded my job duties to include more that would help the resume, namely technical writing. I was cheap labor, so they let me. I knew technical writing was the cross-section I had. I didn’t have the cross-section of salesman and writer to make it as a creative writer. But I had the cross-section of tech and writer to make it as a technical writer.
‘11-‘12: Cheap as I was, it still ended. It took me a long time, and eventually a friend who showed me how to treat looking for a job like a job in itself, to find my first /real/ job as a technical writer. That got me into the door.
By this time the Thing was pretty much over. The degree, as well as that resume-building job, is what secured it. Being a technical writer made me a better a writer, in that it forced me to edit, forced me to write more than what I “enjoyed,” forced me to accept when something would just be completely thrown out and not used. It was easier to say good-bye to words I didn’t care about, and that helped me say good-bye (though, again, I keep all my drafts) to words I did. But that too ended.
‘14-‘16: I started with another company doing technical writing, but the job started to morph, and I let it morph because I realized that technical writing had a ceiling to it, a limit to its advancement and salary. I didn’t love it enough to want to do it for life, particularly at that pay.
Further, I found more than once I could write text of how to do something for someone, or I could just write code so a button could be pressed and it would do it for them. That turned out to be more desired by my employer. Yet again it seemed I was being shown that no one really wanted to read what I wrote, but I couldn’t blame them for wanting efficiency. And it turned out that writing did in fact help in programming and software customization, which I was doing more and more, as documentation helped me keep track of changes as well as create useful release notes.
’16-present: But that too ended. Then I took a contract that was pretty much engineering/development. But that too ended.
And now… Now I’m not really in a hurry to go back to my “day job.” I’m still looking, of course, but I realized something. I hated my jobs. I hated them all. Not with a burning passion, but with a mild contempt.
I liked often the people I worked with. But none of the things I did meant anything except they may have made the company I worked for some money, and they gave me some money in return. They had no loyalty to me (no more than 95% of all companies do nowadays) and I share their lack of sentimentality for them.
I don’t have the Thing to make me guilt-free when I do my creative projects, but I still do it, as the drive is still there. Maybe without the Thing, I’ll have a better shot at making the creative pay off. I have this desire to impact someone with my art/music/writing, the way art/music/writing has impacted me.
I can’t fight it, but I want to. Society maligns what I’m attracted to. Society wants me to be straight lacing, embraced by white collars, and I hate it. I want to want that.
And pretty soon I feel it, after I dawdle too long to try to fail, or fail too few to succeed but enough to fear continuing, I’ll probably go back to jobs I hate. Or maybe I’m just scared of the apocalypse.
