Novelist Angie Kim was a lawyer. Until she realized she couldn’t take it anymore.

“I was in my late twenties and was a litigation partner at Williams & Connolly in DC. I loved being in the courtroom, but I hated everything else, like, all another – on the practice of law. That month was the best: I had three trials in a row, all in arbitration format. I have to make overtures, crosses and objections. I was second president, and the first president was wonderful, so on the third try, he let me do everything. I loved the experience, but I was exhausted.

“My boyfriend was giving a talk in San Francisco. He said, ‘Come with me, you deserve a break. I wanted to see the ocean, so I went to the Cliff House, and it was so windy that there was no one there. I was by the window and the waves were just awesome. Some people had told me about this book by Tim O’Brien, In the lake of the woods. So I ordered a bottle of wine and sat there reading it cover to cover.

“As a busy lawyer, I didn’t really read literary novels. I was reading fast and fun crime novels like Mary Higgins Clark. O’Brien’s book was just a revelation. It’s about a missing woman, but structured as evidence and interview transcripts, then lengthy narrative flashbacks. There were six or seven hypotheses about what had happened to him. I remember looking up from time to time to ponder the evidence and crashing waves and drinking that great wine. Then closing the book and feeling, I haven’t been this happy since I became a lawyer.

“I remember thinking, okay, as much as I loved the trials, is it worth having that five-hour streak over the last few years where I was so engrossed in something – the sensory details, intellectual engagement with the text – and I didn’t have something in mind that was stressing me out? When I met my boyfriend for dinner, I said, “I don’t want to be a lawyer anymore” He said, ‘Okay. Great.’ He wasn’t fazed – our friends were always complaining about wanting to quit law.The next day we got engaged.

“After that, I went into management consulting. Later, I left with colleagues to set up a dot-com. Then in 2001, the market bottomed out. I liked both of these jobs.

“I had my first child in September 2001 and became a stay-at-home mom. I was in my 40s when I took my first creative writing class.

This article originally appeared in the February 2022 issue of The Washingtonian.