It’s hard to pinpoint my “rock bottom” as a young writer trying to survive in New York City.
There was the sunny Fort Greene apartment I had high hopes for — but I failed to consider that it was above Mo’s, a very cool bar that favored extremely loud music seven nights a week. I developed anxiety disorder and broke the lease.
Or was my low point that time in Jackson Heights, when a city bus blared the horn behind a double-parked car for an hour while my husband and I tried to put our baby to bed? I won’t tell you which of us finally threw the window open to go ballistic on the driver.
I’d moved to the city 10 years before to get a master’s degree in journalism at NYU. After school, I was on my own with rent and student loans and took fact checking and research jobs, which paid better than entry-level magazine gigs. To shore up other writers’ bylines, I called sources to confirm the antioxidant content of raspberries … the price of mascara … how hyaluronic acid could reduce wrinkles. I stayed up late, freelancing under my own name on the side.
I watched my bosses leverage expense accounts for their wardrobes and hire private cars to get to and from work. I spent thousands of dollars on broker fees in a vain attempt to land a clean apartment with decent subway access and natural light.
Books-turned-movies like “The Nanny Diaries” and “The Devil Wears Prada“ asked the same question I did: “Will my creative passion ever pay for the good life?” That was almost 20 years ago.
Today, of course, young creatives continue to give New York a shot. It’s the subject of “Wanted: Toddler’s Personal Assistant,” Stephanie Kiser’s debut memoir, out Aug. 6 from Sourcebooks.
Kiser writes that after growing up poor in Rhode Island and becoming the first in her family to attend college, she moved to New York with $390,000 in federal student loan debt and dreams of writing for TV or film — the degree she’d earned at Emerson College.
But Kiser quickly realized she couldn’t manage her bills on an entry-level salary. She took a series of nannying jobs for uber-wealthy New Yorkers, and smoothed kindergarteners’ Oscar de la Renta dresses while watching her writing goals fade.
“I thought going to a good college was going to make my life easier and open more doors for me, but the reality is much more complicated,” she writes. “Out in the real world, I saw who college was truly for: those who could afford it.”
She learned a lesson or two about the realities of income inequality in New York City. The gulf is more vast, deep and gnarly than she ever could have imagined.
If writing is your dream — or if it’s simply your top skill — it’s reasonable to try New York. There are hundreds of media and production companies here, and together those industries represent nearly $30 billion in wages annually, according to the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.
But the “talent” sector that includes writers, journalists, photographers, designers and other creatives reflects less than 10% of those wages. Many writers are freelancers who cobble together a living by working across companies and mediums rather than landing a full-time job with health insurance and retirement benefits.
This city is famously exciting, but notoriously exorbitant. I spoke with Kiser over Zoom about trying to make it in New York as a creative person with crushing student loan debt.
How did you imagine life as a young creative in New York City?
Stephanie Kiser: In my mind I was going to just come here and get a writing or production job. A lot of kids I’d gone to school with at Emerson, this happened immediately for them. And I didn’t really realize [they] had family connections or parents paying their rent. I was just like, ‘Oh, he’s working at the NBC Page Program’ — not understanding [it] was paying $14 an hour.
What was it like trying to survive in reality?
It took a couple of months to realize, ‘Oh s—, no, this is not going to happen.‘ Even now, people keep saying, “When are you going to quit your day job? You’ve got this memoir.” And I’m like, “No, that’s still not going to happen, because I need to pay my bills.” I don’t really know when it ends. I think you have to really make it big to be like, ‘This is all I’m going to do.’ Maybe when I have a partner and we’re splitting bills, that could be an option. But as a young single creative in New York, it is really hard.
What surprised you about the wealthy New York families you interviewed with and worked for?
The people that employ these kinds of nannies are so wealthy that they can pay multiple people a full salary and it doesn’t affect them. The richest family I worked for had a full-time nanny, a part-time nanny, a driver — for events, extra babysitters. If we went out to, for example, the Natural History Museum, a lot of times it would be a nanny [for every] kid. So not only did they pay thousands of dollars to walk in the door, but then they’re paying $100 an hour [for each] kid to have a nanny so that they can do every activity they want and not have to wait with the other one.
How does your experience nannying for the ultra-rich still inform your understanding of income inequalities today?
I didn’t even know wealth like that existed. At first I thought, ‘How cool is it that these people live like this?’ And then gradually I started to get grossed out by it because I was like, ‘OK, well, every day I’m throwing out 15 chicken nuggets and four different pastas because the kids didn’t want that one. And 15 blocks north, there’s kids who didn’t eat today.’
Tell me about your most hopeful day as a young creative in NYC.
When I was nannying, whenever I would get a new job that was going to pay me more than the last one, it felt like I was getting closer to something. This weight lifted — ‘Now I can make my bills.’
This really trendy coworking space that Lena Dunham’s best friend had opened [The Wing] , I really wanted to get in because I was like, ‘My brain cells are kind of dying, I’m watching ‘Peppa Pig’ all day.’ Everyone was telling me, “The waitlist is so long, you’re a nanny, you’re not going to get in.” I wrote this application about how I really wanted to work on my book and I needed a space to feel like an office. Three days later, I got in, and I couldn’t believe it. So that felt great because I was working on this book [on weekends]. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do, but it felt like I was getting closer.
If you could go back in time, would you still go to college? Would you go to Emerson?
Honestly, I think about this a lot. When I look at my [student loan] balance, what I took out is less than the interest. It’s hard to say [whether I would do it again]. Had everything not happened the way it happened, I would have a completely different life, I’d probably [be] working as a manager at Stop & Shop in my hometown right now. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m happier with the life that I got.
When will these loans be paid off? Maybe never. When I log onto the [loan] portal, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what a mistake. I shouldn’t have done this.’ That said, I had this sort of transformation as a person from all of these experiences. Could I have done it without the degree? Possibly. But then again, part of the reason I got the nanny jobs was because [my resume] had this college that they were impressed by.
I make so much more than my parents made at my age, but I’m so in debt that it’s kind of equivalent. I can do nicer things. My social network is very different. I know people that they didn’t get to know. But if we’re looking at finances, I’m not really that better off than they are.
If you could go back in time, would you still move to NYC?
I’m never not coming to New York. I love it so much. I think it is the ultimate melting pot. I feel like I understand so many different kinds of people, and I have so much empathy. And even though I didn’t want to be a nanny, I feel like I learned so much being around so many different kinds of people. On one hand, I’m with billionaires all day, but then the housekeeper is someone who literally walked through the desert for 40 hours to get here.
What advice would you give an aspiring writer or artist considering moving to NYC right now?
I don’t want to tell them to do what I did. I don’t want to be like, ‘It’s going to be fine.’ It wasn’t all fine. Sometimes I couldn’t make rent and sometimes I was scraping a toddler’s poop out of his underwear with my hand.
What I will say is, if it takes you six years to get the agent, if it takes you 10 years, if you really think there’s something there, keep trying, keep pushing. Because it is subjective. And so many people that I queried or who read it were like, ‘There’s no way that there’s a place for this in the market.’ And then one day someone told me there was.
Do you feel like being in New York, despite all the difficulties, helped it happen?
Yeah, I do. New York is a really inspiring place.
There’s a story that really stuck with me. [My roommate’s] dad was John Legend’s manager. He came over one day and I was asking him about his career, and I said, “Is there anything that you wish you had done differently?” He told me this story that he used to do yoga with Lady Gaga’s mom, and she was begging him to listen to a demo. Everyone knew that she was trying to get an agent, and [they] all thought she was so foolish. Finally [he] took the demo. He was like, ‘My assistant put it on, and after 10 seconds I said, turn it off and burn it. It’s horrible.’ Two years later, [Lady Gaga] was the biggest star on the planet.
That made me feel like, ‘OK, maybe you’ve just got to find the right person.’ That story really helped keep me going for a long time.
I love that. And I guess being in New York, there’s more people to try, right?
Exactly right.