Elizabeth Cobbe

The Joy of Unmasking Oneself at Work

Earlier this summer, the internal communications person for our very large department at our very large place of employment invited me to write a newsletter feature about my writing career.

I was on the fence. As Olympia Dukakis says in Moonstruck, “Don’t s— where you eat.” But at the end of the day, I decided it was a weird sort of free publicity with a guaranteed 400-person audience.

Here’s a slightly edited version of what I shared… and I hope I can find many more excuses to write publicly about Shohei Ohtani!

The act of writing is an inherently empathetic process. Authors imagine the reader’s experience when writing everything from meeting minutes to a love letter to a thousand-page novel.

All of which makes it ironic that I have struggled for a week to respond to [internal communication person]’s invitation to write about my work as a professional author, because I cannot imagine what my fellow IT community members might want to know.

It’s true that the publishing industry[i] is something of a mystery to those outside of it. In fact, publishing is a mystery to those of us inside it, too. The field consists of a combination of idealists, overworked English majors, and misguided capitalists, all of whom regularly make decisions that make or break careers, with little to no discernible rationale.

The idea of publishing a book carries with it the illusion of permanence, something that often eludes developers and engineers accustomed to seeing their work vanish within a few short years. Given that I’m currently attempting to modernize a system whose core module was written in 1996, I’d say y’all are one up on authors, whose overstock regularly gets pulped.

There’s also a natural curiosity surrounding those with a skill set like creative writing that takes years to develop. I mean, I’m kind of fascinated with Shohei Ohtani, because I can barely hit a whiffle ball off a tee. But that’s Shohei. He’s like the Colleen Hoover of baseball. With a pro literary agent and an above-average short story acceptance rate of 3.5 percent, I’ve come further than most writers ever get, but nobody’s paying for my book tour.

What’s left is the day-to-day work, which is discouraging, frustrating, and ultimately the best and most rewarding part. All those early-morning and lunch-hour writing sessions add up to stories, chapters, and novels. Even when (not if) some of these works never see the light of day, there’s value in the process.

That unquantifiable worth is hard to explain to the unit-testing crowd. It’s also a tough sell in a broader social context that consistently devalues authentic human expression. Does anybody even say the word “spiritual” with a straight face anymore?

Well, I do. I derive spiritual value from the unglamorous, arduous work of imagining the lives of others. I believe that creating beauty in a broken world is noble and worthwhile.

The IT community at [place of employment] is a fascinating bunch, with a wide range of talents and interests at work and outside of it. I don’t always understand where everyone is coming from, but that’s the most wonderful thing: I get to imagine

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[i] Meaning traditional publishing, meaning the big publishing houses that can get your book into Barnes & Noble, meaning you can’t submit to them without an agent, and it’s really hard to get an agent. Why not self-publish? Because self-publishing is a great way to find yourself with 1,000 unopened copies of your book threatening a house fire in your attic. Don’t believe me? Go count how many self-published books you’ve purchased in your lifetime. No, you’re not the first to ask.

Okay, but what’s bonkers about this is that now at happy hours, people very politely and thoughtfully ask about my writing career. Only, I am utterly miserable at talking about my writing to anyone who doesn’t already understand the lolsob nature of the business!

But talking about one’s creative work is a skill, one that I’m now gaining all sorts of hilarious practice at.

If I can stumble through the opening moments of these conversations, however, it’s a lovely chance to connect with other humans who also work at [place of employment]. If they’re asking about writing, then so far it’s meant that they’re interested in stories, and in difficult endeavors, and in things that don’t come easily. These are wonderful conversations to have.

In Other News

I will be at WorldCon in Seattle next month! I’ll be appearing on the panel “The Future of Education in Technology” on Friday morning at 10:30. I look forward to meeting lots of great people at the larger event!

And the following month, I will be a panelist at ArmadilloCon as well. Looking forward to it!

Also watched all of Murderbot this summer. First half of the season is good but a touch slow, the second half is absolutely wonderful. Can’t wait for season two!