After I finished college, I got a job on Wall Street as a derivatives trader, but after a couple years of it, I was calling in sick in order to work on my novel.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I left Goldman Sachs. I was thinking about going to another Wall Street place. I didn't want to do that. That was crazy. After you work on Wall Street, it's a choice: would you rather work at McDonald's or on the sell side? I would choose McDonald's over the sell side.
I loved working on Wall Street. I loved the meritocracy of it and the camaraderie of the trading floor.
When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs.
I happened to fall into a job that wound up being a seminal piece of television history, which was a show I did on HBO called 'The Wire.' That experience really set the bar for me and opened a lot of doors. It also gave me a lot of street cred in terms of my phone ringing and job offers.
I knew I'd have to go to work in real estate or something else or I could never finish my novel.
I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.
I took a job at a white-shoe NYC law firm, with an office, business cards, and a fat starter paycheck.
I worked also, doing things such as our paper route and, later on, waitressing.
I was working as a stockbroker in New York and had the seemingly perfect life.
I studied business in school, so I worked for Chanel in marketing. And I also worked part-time in an office. So I had office jobs. And then I realized I needed to get the hell out of there, just realizing there was no fulfillment.