Hello and welcome to Today in One Minute. Our story comes from writer Klara Feenstra, who set out to escape “real life” by writing a novel—but discovered she couldn’t dodge bureaucracy anywhere, not even in her imagination.

Feenstra began her book convinced she’d find “Hunter S. Thompson-style freewheeling” fun, only to run headlong into research spreadsheets, timelines, fact-checks and line edits. She tried to build a world in Zalipie, Poland, and even learned some Polish, all while juggling grants and a retail job. What she thought would be pure creativity turned into an “unpaid internship” with noisy red pens and endless apostrophe hunts.

After years of drafting, revising and pitching, Feenstra realized her project had morphed into something she never planned: a lesson in adulthood. As she puts it, “there is no magic trick out of reality: bureaucracy and failure and early mornings are the bedfellows of adulthood.”

In the end, her novel not only survived but reflected her own growth—from escapist dreamer to disciplined writer. Thanks for listening to Today in One Minute.
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