Waitress

Dear Stella,

At The All-American in NYC, I was surrounded by wait staff and bartenders who wanted to be something else. Jessica would boom out Beyonce and Mary J. Blige songs every time she’d swing by the service bar for her cokes and sprites. Carl dreamed of recording an album and getting the fuck outta that place.

Isn’t it funny? I thought, Here are servers wanting to be artists, and I’m an artist aspiring to be a server. I’m on the backward track, wanting to be good at what they seem to do effortlessly. I felt comfortable, then, in my notion of myself as a writer doing this crazy thing for the “experience” and the “material.”

Things feel different from here. My novel has been out in the world for months, and no publisher seems to want it. A story I sent out to an editor who specially requested it from me was rejected, and I can’t remember the purpose of keeping a blog. Reasons why I shouldn’t take these rejections personally circle around me, filled with words like “recession,” and “layoffs,” and “the end of the book.” But I can’t really feel them.

Instead I feel as if Who I Am is a waitress—a waitress who is treated badly, is knee-deep in debt, and who aspires to be a writer.

love,
Stephanie