Not Safe For Work: Author of the viral essay 'My boyfriend, a writer, broke up with me because I am a writer'

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But the truth is that I feel most comfortable and empowered on the page, expressing myself at a safe distance and after extended reflection. When someone senior tells you how pretty you look, you smile and thank him - and make a mental note never to wear that dress alone with him again. Sometimes it’s easy to preach about what you would do in a theoretical situation, until you are facing it head on.

While I don’t want to talk too much about the detailed plot, I do want to describe the overall feel of the book. The story is delivered by an unnamed protagonist, a young woman, recently graduated from the prestigious Harvard university. My job straddles the worlds of Hollywood and publishing: I run book-to-screen development at a literary agency, which means I am responsible for identifying books that would be good for adaptation, whether as a movie or TV show, and then pitching and helping shepherd them from page to screen.I was complimented for having “good energy”, and my “niches” were identified as “women” and “books”. Everyone likes to speak loudly and frequently about how committed they are to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and on screen. We have come up with a way to discuss and punish the most violent forms of harassment and assault, but not the experiences and dynamics that live in the vast grey space where most discrimination takes place, much more subtly and insidiously, perpetrated by men and women alike. Will I try to convince myself that if they are interested in supporting a critique of Hollywood, the ends will justify the means? People previously unaware of the terms “implicit bias” and “microaggressions” have now attended training sessions about them and know that they are bad.

When someone senior tells you how pretty you look, you smile and thank him – and make a mental note never to wear that dress alone with him again. I don’t know how the daughter (I keep saying daughter as she was unnamed in the book) kept her patience and was mostly able to stay polite and courteous as I think I would have cut ties very early on. I left my job at the TV network to go to graduate school, during which time I wrote a novel about a Hollywood assistant and the slippery slope of complicity.

Despite (or, more accurately, because of) its gritty, often raw depiction of a shocking reality for so many women, Not Safe for Work pulled me in. It is widely understood that you are not to grope or make sexual advances on your employees, and that if you do so, you may face consequences.