Plight of the Mid-List Author: The World Owes me a Living

No it doesn't.

Four years ago, Kerry Hudson had just won a prestigious French literary prize when one late payment left her unable to make the rent on her sublet flat in Whitechapel. Could she continue as a writer? Or would she have to return to her old job in the charity sector?

Oh, my sweet summer child.

Kerry Hudson's a work-a-day gal with a cool thing about her that requires a ton of extra work and effort. 

She thought she'd be living the writer's life. Here's a great example of said, The Algonquin Round Table. Reader(s) have probably never heard of the Algonquin Round Table or it's members but we assure you, it was a thing. Today there is a commemorative painting sitting above the spot were these lit-lights gathered in the jazz age.

How do I know?

That's me at the Algonquin Round Table. 

[Oh, you're really classing it up there.-Ed]

I'm the best writer to sit there in half a century.

[If you think so.-Ed]

My great, great grandfather used to take my grandfather for lunch there every Sunday in the 1930s. Christmas dinner at the Round Table was a tradition for the Stroocks until just last year. Mark Stroock held his 50th wedding anniversary party and his 90th birthday party there. He'd slip hundreds to the staff. If my grandfather dropped something the Maitre' D would scrample to pick it up.

Look at the pic again. Do note that my drink is full.

I can sit at the Algonquin Round Table whenever I want - and Kerry Hudson can't.

Yet here I am worrying about dishes and laundry and tonight's dinner and dance recitals and mowing the lawn and getting an op-ed onto a Ruski news site and...

Get a load of this:

Despite having just won France’s Prix Femina, Hudson had to apply for a Royal Literary Fund hardship grant to help her until next payment. “Coming from a working-class background, I don’t have a credit card, I don’t have family I can borrow from – there’s no safety net,” she says.

Literary fund hardship grant....oh my god, I can't even...