Diane and David at 65 mph

Driving on I55 north toward Chicago on the day after Thanksgiving, I found a public radio station where Diane Rehm was interviewing David Wroblewski about his first novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. He quickly said three things that made me smile.

First was the way he honored his story, which was apparent in this remark: 

I had the one advantage that unpublished writers have, which is, I had time. I promised myself that I would take as long as it needed.

That led Diane to ask him how he supported himself for the 10 years it took to get the book written. He said he had "a 30-year career in making software." And then, before we could leap to the standard story-line of dumping-the-dreary-day-job, he set us straight:

I was pulling a paycheck doing that. But I really don't think of it as pulling a paycheck, because I love the work and I expect I'll be making software my whole life. 

I think that took Diane out of her game plan for the interview too, because she asked a question that, if you read between the lines, came across as "well, at least maybe you could work at home and slip in a little work on the novel while you were getting paid to make software." To which David replied:

I did work from home a couple of days every week. But I was really working from home on the software. And usually it was evenings and weekends when I was working on the book. I wanted to be at home because I wanted to be with my dog. That was my real motivation for working from home. 

I bought his book -- because here's a guy who's willing to take ten years to tell a story if that's what the story requires, who writes not as an escape from something but as another way to be happy, and who has found a way to work from home not because the office is such a bad place -- but because home is where his dog is.