17 July 2017
Another editor, a rival of mine with a fondness for hypocrisy, once said there was nothing worse than a truthless writer, but I have never known any. I know some whose writing has too much style and not enough story, but their lives are never like that. The writers I know make their lives more interesting just by being writers-which is not the same as writing, but that divergence leads to self-serving distinctions good writers never care about anyway. Let's just acknowledge that writing is hard so it is okay to be a little tortured, and some writers are. It can all go very dark, but there is no sweeter validation than getting published for the first time. I sometimes remind writers of that. You can remind yourself.
