Natalie Shapiro was twenty-​­four years old, walking down a city street that smelled like hot garbage and possibility. A couple of friends with whom she’d gone to college had moved out to the ­suburbs—already!—and she imagined they spent their time breathing in freshly mown grass. (And drinking wine? Waving to nosy neighbors? Power walking while wearing visors? Natalie didn’t really know anything about the suburbs.) Others had been picked off by consulting firms that sent them across the country each week, and the smell of an airplane was more familiar to them than that of their own bedsheets.

But to Natalie, that hot garbage stench was magic. Not that she wanted to stand right over the trash bag to her left and take a deep breath, but it was nice to know it was there. Because things weren’t supposed to be perfect and manicured at this age, not when you were bravely pursuing what you loved despite the difficulty of it.

Natalie loved writing. And sure, if the city’s most high-powered literary agent appeared in front of her, leaping over the trash bag in her high heels to scream, You! I could sense the power of your imagination from across the street, and I’ve already gotten you a ­six-­figure book deal!, Natalie would have taken that in a heartbeat. (Well, she might’ve had some questions: Was this agent in her right mind? Also, how did she jump in heels without breaking an ankle? Assuming it all checked out, though, Natalie would’ve signed right on the dotted line.)

But despite the occasional daydream, she knew it didn’t work that way. Becoming a writer was tough, competitive. Anyone pursuing it was supposed to struggle and get discouraged for a little while. In fact, the struggle and the discouragement were what made a writer good.