It is a fact that even an NYTBR-approved novelist can still find herself in highly undignified positions at certain times. I am sitting Indian-style on the dirty linoleum floor at the JFK Delta baggage claim, hugging my carry-on bag like it’s a pillow and trying to sob subtly into my cell phone.
I’m crying about money, something I have a negative amount of, according to a robot at my bank. I have some change in my jacket, but it is not even enough to get a cookie from the concession stand in front of me and I am starving.
I haven’t had money for weeks. My paperwork from the new university job has not gone through. My publisher has paid for some plane flights and hotels, but I have not had more than what a struggling boyfriend could spare. I have a million fancy dresses to wear and a lot of good face to put on, but all I’ve been doing is eying the prices on every menu and pretending cookies and chips are my foods of choice, that Subway is my adorably ironic passion, that the McDonald’s breakfast menu is my kitschy little crush.
I call people, but I don’t want to ask for help. I want them to think of it as a humorous anecdote but not that it’s real, that my life is that difficult. After all, certain friends who are not involved in publishing think I am rich and famous. Why burst that bubble?
Later, when my publicist finds out, she is shocked. “Why didn’t you call us?!”
I give her some gloss-over answer, but I want to say, I don’t know who to call, when to call, why to call. I am learning everything over again. I have become what the publishing world and media suspect of a debut novelist—suddenly, I am new to the universe, not just to being a novelist. I suddenly don’t know what the hell I’m doing.