That’s how I’d have capitalized this recent article by The Atlantic, which asked that rather big question. Describing Alex Jenni, a French biology teacher who recently won the Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary award, the article noted,
In the Alexis Jenni school of thought, a writer may be someone, anyone, with a compulsion to scrawl or [...]

Everywhere you look, there are reasons not to write. If you believe in omens–as I do–you may start to wonder if the universe is trying to tell you something.
You may feel like you shouldn’t even start writing. Recently, the Huffington Post offered 10 reasons not to write your novel. And some [...]

Like many writers, I tend to think of job-related writing–like copywriting, or editing, or ghostwriting memos–as Not Really Writing. In the Huffington Post, though, Holly Robinson expresses a very different point of view:
“Doesn’t it bug you to write other people’s books when you could be working on your own?” another writer asked me recently.
Not [...]

Recently Chip Cheek, a writer and the administration coordinator at Grub Street in Boston, quit his job—even though he loved it. He explains why in an essay on Grub Street’s blog:
I have always had a full-time job, even while I was getting my MFA. It has seemed the prudent thing to do: keep a [...]

So maybe Tuesday’s post on the 10-year novel got you down. Here’s some encouragement: lit site The Rumpus is introducing a new occasional column, “The Long Haul,” featuring writers reflecting on the (long-term) writing life. Or, as the editors put it:
Whether you’re a literary wunderkind whose first book was a bestseller, or one [...]

n Slate.com, Susanna Daniels reflects on the process of writing her first novel—which she describes as “the quiet hell of 10 years of novel writing”:
During my should-be-writing years, I thought about my novel all the time. Increasingly, these were not happy or satisfying thoughts. My “novel” (which had started to wear its own air quotes [...]

For many aspiring writers, that’s the big question: How do you get from #1 to #3? No one can guarantee that you’ll actually profit, of course, but certain steps make it much much much more likely that your work will get out there and find an audience. Though I’m certainly no expert, I’ve [...]

aybe it’s summer—too sunny out to work inside!—or maybe it’s just the 80º+ weather in Boston, but I’ve been feeling a little… tired. Just in time, Paperback Writer has a post on how to combat fatigue—physical, mental, and, most importantly for writers, creative:
Creating on demand, always being on, always being told we’re not good [...]

At the Coachella Review, Steve Almond makes a case—through his email exchange with an agent—against contributing to an anthology for free:
Mark -
I may be willing to do this, but I’d really like to know: who IS getting paid, if not the contributors? I contribute to a lot of anthologies, and almost without exception, they offer [...]

In the L.A. Times, author Dani Shapiro reflects on the challenges of a writing career–the lost days of “writing in the cold” for years while building a reputation, the recent “blockbuster or bust” mentality, and how emerging writers can persevere in spite of all of this:
I recently had the honor of acting as guest editor [...]