The Lost City of Z author and New Yorker contributor David Grann’s audio tales of early floundering in the world of letters is about as encouraging as anything else on the Internets at this minute. It is certainly quicker than 1) reading Po Bronson’s entire website; 2) tracking down a dog-eared copy of “What Color is Your Parachute?” at the Strand; 3) napping.
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Early on I tried fiction, but I wasn’t very good at it. I wrote a very bad novel that is thankfully sitting in a drawer somewhere. I was a schoolteacher, I taught seventh and eighth grade and I tried to write fiction on the side. I tried a few grad school programs because I didn’t know how to make it … Eventually, I was desperate for a job and there was a new newspaper opening up in Washington D.C. called The Hill. Even though my interest in politics wasn’t huge, they gave me a job as a copy editor.
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