Not Safe For Work: Author of the viral essay 'My boyfriend, a writer, broke up with me because I am a writer'

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The writing is fresh and stylish and the conversational tone helps the thought-provoking narrative zip along. She was needy, unreasonable and insistent on maintaining a strong dependency between herself and her daughter. Everyone likes to speak loudly and frequently about how committed they are to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and on screen. So visceral is the narrator's voice that every time I opened the book it felt like sliding into uncomfortable heels. I also knew he had passed on projects I advocated for because of their “narrow” focus on mostly women.

I thought the project had a lot of promise and wanted to see if there was anything I could do to push it forward. I’m not sure if asking them out loud is useful, but it’s a start, and it feels more productive than silence.Although I don’t think she would have described herself in this way, I thought that she was extremely strong willed and she had a firm understanding of her own boundaries.

I remember being 23, anxiously navigating halls where executives didn’t look me in the eye, holding the muted phone to my ear, thinking: if I have the opportunity to speak, I hope I make the most of it. I thought it was important that even characters that were very in touch what what was acceptable or not fell into that trap. Will I try to convince myself that if they are interested in supporting a critique of Hollywood, the ends will justify the means? I left my job at the TV network to go to graduate school, during which time I wrote a novel about a Hollywood assistant and the slippery slope of complicity. I was a teeny tiny bit disappointed with the open ending but hopefully it means that there may be more to come as I would love to read more about these characters and their lives.My job straddles the worlds of Hollywood and publishing: I run book-to-screen development at a literary agency, which means I am responsible for identifying books that would be good for adaptation, whether as a movie or TV show, and then pitching and helping shepherd them from page to screen. I was surprised when it ended – this is quite a slim novel and it felt like she was just getting started, when it ended. Despite (or, more accurately, because of) its gritty, often raw depiction of a shocking reality for so many women, Not Safe for Work pulled me in. While I don’t want to talk too much about the detailed plot, I do want to describe the overall feel of the book. Do I actually care enough about these systemic issues or am I also, in a way, exploiting them as literary material for my own professional gain?