“Writers Aren’t Who They Think They Are” by David Ebenbach

What the novel says, I think, is that any single event is the result of many, many things. That’s why you have the hundreds of pages leading up to the climax; those pages suggest the philosophy that you can only fully understand that climax and its significance if you know a whole lot about all the things that led up to it… The short story says something different—not contradictory, but different. The short story suggests that any single moment or detail, in some sense, contains everything: the characters; their problems and promise; the significance of the events; human nature, more generally; the past, the present, and the future.

Here’s my point: Writers rarely know who they are as writers. Well, if you grab hold of one of the most insightful ones and ask them, they might be able to articulate who they are in that particular moment. At that moment they’re obsessed with coming-of-age stories, maybe, or they only believe in first-person narrators, or everything they do is stream-of-consciousness. But that’s only who that writer is for that one particular moment. That one fleeting moment. And only a fool would decide that that’s how things have to be forever.

Actually, each one of us can do anything. We are not limited to one defining thing.

“To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now” by Neil Irwin

In the 21st-century economy, many millions of workers find… Rather than being treated as assets that companies seek to invest in, they have become costs to be minimized.

“Beesting, Kneecap, Lozenge” by Dan Murphy

I write for two hours every day. When I burrow into an uninterrupted state, and succeed in ignoring the infinite distractions at my fingertips, the practice of it makes me better for it. Seems obvious. But the locked in time plus repetition is what produces. Reading, of course, helps too. I know that when I am reading I want to write more. I know that when I’m writing I want to read more. Words beget words. You’ll never get through them all, and thus you’ll never run out. I find a great deal of comfort in that.

“The ‘New York Times’ Books Desk Will Make You Read Again” by John Maher

“I am ever bullish on the book industry, because I think that people like to hear stories, and books remain one of the great ways in which to tell them. And as everything else gets faster, quicker, shorter, smaller, people look for balance in their lives and want to turn to books for a broader context, deeper context, a sustained narrative.”

“Things That Are Not Failure” by T.S. Bazelli

Failure in writing is not:
Still having a lot to learn.
Reaching a certain age and not being published yet.
Unexpected things getting in the way of writing.
Watching other people succeed while you don’t.
Needing a break now and then.
Finding this hard. It is hard.

“You Aren’t Lazy — You’re Just Terrified: On Paralysis And Perfectionism” by Jenni Berrett

“I think the problem here isn’t the writing – it’s you. You’re expecting a product without respecting the process. I’m not interested in getting something perfect from you, and you shouldn’t be either. Just do the work. Write the story. And then write it again, as many times as you need to.”

Mistakes are essential to human progress and personal development, so why do I keep telling myself I’m not allowed to make any?

“A Constitution for a Young Artist” by Maxime Kawawa-Beaudan

Work until the work speaks for itself.

There is only the pen, the excuse you make not to pick it up, and the reason you find to pick it up anyway.

“On Star Trek: Discovery and Michelle Yeoh’s Accent” by Swapna Krishna

As a young girl of color, Star Trek was the first place I can remember seeing myself represented. Through characters like Uhura, Sulu and Geordi LaForge, I saw people that looked a little like me — that shared the first thing people notice about me, a darker skin color — and for the first time understood that I could achieve anything, even serve on a starship. I, and people who looked like me, existed in this future. It was one of the major forces that shaped my childhood and the adult I have become.

But still, nothing could have prepared me for the moment when Yeoh utters those first words. I personally do not speak English with an accent… But my parents, immigrants to this country, speak with an accent, though they’ve lived here the bulk of their lives.

It’s hard to put into words what it feels like to watch a thing you so badly want to love and, all of a sudden, being emotionally devastated (in the best way possible) because they included you in such a seemingly effortless way. When you’re used to having to fight for every small morsel of representation you get, having it granted without even having to even ask, and in such a thoughtful way, is overwhelming.

“Let’s Talk About the Fantasy of the Writer’s Lifestyle” by Rosalie Knecht

It’s easy to forget that Hemingway and the rest went to Paris because it was cheaper than staying at home, and that it was cheaper because a catastrophic war had just laid waste to the continent. These writers produced so much material about each other, in fiction and in letters, that they accidentally crystallized a specific time and place in the American imagination as the essence of what a creative life looks like.

This fantasy image does us a disservice. It leaves us with no model to follow when we try to integrate art-making with functional lives. That period when a person could make a living writing fiction for periodicals was a blip, and it’s over; we’ve long since returned to the baseline, which is that the vast majority of fiction is written around and beside a whole lot of other work, and it’s the other work that pays the rent. As such, there is no writer’s lifestyle; your lifestyle is determined by what that other work is.

Those of us who are lucky enough to be living this fairly obvious reality can feel at times like we’ve failed. I have the pleasure of my work, but where’s my glamor? Why doesn’t it look the way I thought it would when I was 14? The cruel edge on the bohemian fantasy is that it pretends that leisure can be had for free. As every adult knows, leisure takes capital.

Setting aside the catalog fantasy means being able to interrogate the idea that the writer is always observing, standing at the edge of the party, never unpacking all his suitcases or renewing his lease. Most writers are, in fact, as deeply rooted in their communities as anybody else. But that’s hard to picture. … How would it look if we pushed that rootedness to the center, valorized it, acknowledged it as the norm?

If I were speaking to my 14-year-old self, who had already fully assimilated the writer-lifestyle-fantasy from various sources, I would say this: First of all, good news. You’re going to write books. Second, you’re going to spend very little time on terraces or piazzas of any kind. … The important thing is, though, that you will get to write.