Along the way, I've worked as a waitress, I've done phone surveys, and worked as a receptionist, and for the last twenty years I've taught. When I was an actor, the key was to find a job that kept your days free to audition.

As a writer, the ideal job is the one that allows you time and mental space away from it. Teaching seemed to me like the obvious choice - those summers off, you know - but my experience may serve as a cautionary tale.

If you have some other profession that allows you your evenings or weekends, terrific, stick with that. Having a profession other than writing also has the potential side benefit of providing you with material, something to write about.

I kept writing short stories and sending out my manuscript, and it kept coming back like a bad penny. It was rejected all over town, quite often in very complimentary terms, but rejected nonetheless. Agents would return it saying that they loved it but didn't think they could sell it, or they would ask if I could change the collection into linked stories.

That requires quite an imaginative leap because it's hard for me to imagine that my biography would be of much interest to anyone, and because I'm a fairly private person, the notion doesn't appeal to me.

I figured that to be a writer I would need to have been born in the nineteenth century, be British, or have three names. So I turned my sights elsewhere . . . to acting.

Peculiar as I was, and remain, I was trained to be practical. I'm still amazed at the radical temerity of my friends, you included, Julie, who choose poetry as their vocation. I envy your faith.