Should I Bite the Hand That Feeds Me?

A Literal Literary Loser Does Something Very, Very Stupid

Very few authors can support themselves exclusively through writing fiction. Most writers need a day job (or three).

In my case, my main day job is writing about education, and in working with NYC families to find the best fit school for their child.

As I love to say, “NYC schools are the gift that keeps on giving. There is never a week in which I don’t have a new scandal or controversy to write about.”

In my 20s and 30s, I worked in televised figure skating. I covered the National, European, World and Olympic championships for ABC, NBC, ESPN, Lifetime, and TNT.

Friends would always ask, “When are you going to write your tell-all, behind the scenes book?”

And I would say, “When I am sure I never, ever want to work in figure skating again.”

So instead of writing a non-fiction tell-all, I wrote a series of fictional figure skating mysteries. Where, as the disclaimer says, “No one is based on anyone living or dead.”

Now, friends ask me, “When are you going to write your tell-all, behind the scenes book about NYC school admissions?”

I stopped covering figure skating when my kids were born, so I had some freedom in what I said about the sport (and the personalities within it) without fear of career repercussions.

But I am still working in school admissions, and I intend to for the foreseeable future. It is, after all, my most profitable day job.

Yet, the stories of how far some parents will go to get their child into the “right” school are infinitely entertaining. We got a sneak peek of it at the college level when celebrities like Felicity Huffman and Lori Laughlin risked going to jail for their kids’ education.

Now imagine that at the Kindergarten level. Bet you can’t. Except I live it every day.

And it warrants being written about.

Will I use people’s real names?

Absolutely not.

Will I use people’s precise, personal situations?

Absolutely not.

Will I combine multiple experiences of multiple parents and children and schools and Admissions Directors?

Yeah. I will.

Because they are too good not to.

My agent is currently shopping around a manuscript entitled, “Admit None: An NYC Schools Mystery.”

Think “Devil Wears Prada” meets “The Nanny Diaries” meets Agatha Christie.

I think it’s hilariously funny, but also a deep dive into the pressures faced by modern parents to meet impossible standards, while constantly being blamed for issues outside their control.

I am deeply sympathetic to every mother and father that I gently skewer in “Admit None.” I couldn’t write about their fears and ambitions, if I didn’t also share them - up to a point. (Murder. That point is murder.)

So fingers crossed that “Admit None: An NYC Schools Mystery” finds a literary home.

And that, when it does, my little writing hobby doesn’t totally torpedo my day job.

What do you think? Am I out of my mind to take such a monumental risk? Let me know in the Comments below!

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And just in case I am never allowed to be around small children again, please enjoy my daughter and I reviewing a picture book, “A Visit To Moscow”: