How to Tell My Parents I Plan to Write for a Living

I was happy, this summer, to return to my happy Texas suburb. No more papers for three months. No more reading assignments. I have a job. I have a car. The neighborhood pool looks over the lake. Generally, there’s time to relax, but I’m also earning some extra cash. This summer was supposed to be fool-proof.

That is, until you factor in the parental units.

The thing is, I love my parents. They’re strict, yeah, but they’ve taught me how to survive in the world. I didn’t grow up to be one of the multitude of idiots I encounter in my day-to-day life, and I am grateful.

Yet, somehow they got it into their heads that I’m going to go to grad school and become an English professor. It’s not that that’s a bad idea. It’s actually a smart idea—which is why they love it. The problem with this whole shebang is that I have never once expressed interest in going to grad school, let alone becoming a professor. You’d think they’d notice that I’ve yet to sign up for the GRE. But no. They talk about it at least once a week. Bring it up casually, as if they are pushing it into my head.

If this is their plan, it’s failing miserably. Sorry. What I really want to do is write. Specifically, write for television.

I love tv. I mean, most people do, but I don’t just like to watch it—I love the way it works. Serialized stories have always appealed to me. Television characters seem to become so much more than other characters. You get to follow them through years and years. They get so much screen time that they become real. Also, to be honest, tv is sometimes the only storytelling people get. I don’t approve of this. I am an English major after all. I work in a bookstore. Books are necessary. Unfortunately, many people live without knowing the joy of reading. Without the knowledge that comes with it. Good tv—great writing—is one way to bring a little bit of the literary world into people’s lives. That may sound a little ridiculous, but the more smart tv we have out there, the better off we are as a society. Seriously, if anything half-decent replace things like “Jersey Shore,” we’ll all certainly be better off.

In any case, it’s easy to write that here, but less easy to tell my parents that after graduation I plan to pack up and move to LA. I like to hope that they’ll support me in whatever I decide to do, but who knows?