Pride, Work and Necessity of Side Projects: Emily J. Smith’s Itch to Keep Writing Naturally Sparked the Founding of Matchmaking App Chorus—Her Tech Startup

What are you working on—on the side?

My main side project is my writing. I write essays, mostly, and I’m also working on a novel and a nonfiction book. I started writing about five years ago. I never studied it, or did it professionally; a career in the arts had always felt out of the question, financially. I studied engineering and then went to business school. My world was always numbers, not words.

I started writing on the side in my thirties. At first, I was afraid to admit that I wrote in...