Day Jobs

Many very talented writers are socially incompetent. And even if they are competent enough to deal with the regularity of the 9 to 6 job – or, as it’s now become worldwide, the 9 to 9 job – there’s another problem. The very process of drafting, revising, questioning everything that you’re presented with, which is what the literary writer does, means that when you step into a standard working environment, you recognize it as a ridiculous, arbitrary environment…. And you say to yourself, “I don’t want to do this, it’s ridiculous.” You reject it as being just a pawn in the system.

MOHSIN HAMID