Creative Accounting
I never thought I would have a book published; I’m an accountant. I’m trained in a field where the phrase “creative accounting” is in most cases literally illegal. It’s only recently that I’ve been able to sit down in a coffee shop, with a blank word document in front of me, without worrying if I might be out of my absolute mind.
I’m part of the last generation who spent their early teen years in an internet-free bubble. The adults around me had easily-defined jobs – teacher, mechanic, doctor, etc. I didn’t know any writers. I knew adults who were artists, but they weren’t the type you would go to for tax advice. After high school graduation, I headed off to college with the notion I should study business, whatever that was. I took one required freshman creative writing seminar and it would be six years before I tried to write creatively again.
I remember it vividly. I had a Master’s degree, a CPA license, and was working for a big-four accounting firm. I was on location, auditing a utility company in the middle of a New England winter. I was waiting on documents from the client and had some time to kill. My computer faced out into the large bullpen, so I couldn’t just surf the internet. I had to do something that looked like work to anyone who walked by, so I wrote a poorly-structured, ridiculously formatted, spec script for “The Office.” I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I didn’t even know what a spec script was. I was wearing a suit and performing four-part analytics. I was not a writer.
In 2008, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue my dreams. Just kidding! I got a new accounting job. The thing I didn’t realize when I packed my bags and headed across the country was, in Los Angeles, having an abstract creative side-hustle was the norm, even for the left-brained corporate type. I was fortunate to hit it off with two co-workers, fellow auditors, who liked writing. We would meet after work in the conference room and brainstorm ideas. I didn’t feel like an imposter with them. They hadn’t spent the day writing either; they’d been staring at spreadsheets, re-calculating margins, and testing process flowcharts.
There are lots of things that can make you a bad writer, but the possibility of being better at something else isn’t one of them. There is a pervasive myth in the creative arts that to be a true artist, you have to live and breathe it. That it wakes you up at night. That you must pursue it at all costs. I think we’re starting to move past that idea, and I’m happy to add my voice to the opposition; it’s nothing more than a barrier to entry.
I spent way too long doubting I was the right type of person to be a writer, time I should have been putting words on paper. Every promotion felt like evidence against me. If I truly had what it took to be a writer, I should have been failing miserably at such a serious, structured career. In hindsight, I can see that mindset was ridiculous; I was waiting for a sign, or for the world to give me permission.
I was waiting for a logical reason to try writing a book. Maybe I was waiting for someone else in my orbit to do it first, not just write, but be published. I wanted evidence that it could be done; I wanted rules that I could follow and steps I could emulate. In the end, what I needed was to get over it. There are no defined rules. There is no clear path. If I wanted to be a writer, I had to stop labeling myself. I was perceiving my accounting career image as a disadvantage. I had to quit using it as an excuse and start trying to see it as a strength.
What ultimately worked for me was finding a symbiosis between my left and right-brain. I stopped shying away from being a plotter. An idea didn’t have to be inspired by a whisper in the wind; an idea could come from writing down as many action verbs as I could in five minutes. I could obsess over word counts and outlines. I could analyze which time of day I was most productive, and if my writing had any correlation to drinking iced or hot coffee. I stopped worrying about how I was doing it, because it was finally getting done.
My debut novel, “The Prized Girl,” comes out in January 2020 and I still have enough doubts to drive me below ground into a doomsday bunker, but I hope I’ve finally gotten past the fear that on the most basic level, my brain wasn’t built to write fiction. I like math. I like rules. I like for there to be a plan. So, what? None of those things has to come at the cost of creativity. Our capabilities aren’t finite.
—
Amy K. Green is the author of the forthcoming psychological thriller THE PRIZED GIRL (Dutton, 1/14/2020). She was born and raised in New England and now splits her time between Boston and Los Angeles working in Production Accounting, most recently on the 2019 film Little Women.
Follow her on Twitter @amykgreen
From debut author Amy K. Green comes a devastating tale of psychological suspense: a teen pageant queen is found murdered in a small New England town, and her sister’s search for answers unearths more than she bargained for.
Days after a young pageant queen named Jenny is found murdered, her small town grieves the loss alongside her picture-perfect parents. At first glance, Jenny’s tragic death appears clear-cut for investigators. The most obvious suspect is one of her fans, an older man who may have gotten too close for comfort. But Jenny’s half-sister, Virginia—the sarcastic black sheep of the family—isn’t so sure of his guilt and takes matters into her own hands to find the killer.
But for Jenny’s case and Virginia’s investigation, there’s more to the story. Virginia, still living in town and haunted by her own troubled teenage years, suspects that a similar darkness lay beneath the sparkling veneer of Jenny’s life. Alternating between Jenny’s final days and Virginia’s determined search for the truth, the sisters’ dual narratives follow a harrowing trail of suspects, with surprising turns that race toward a shocking finale.
Infused with dark humor and driven by two captivating young women, The Prized Girl tells a heartbreaking story of missed connections, a complicated family, and a town’s disturbing secrets.
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
