Writing

Here’s Something To Depress and Inspire Every Writer

We want to write. We don’t really want to do all that other stuff.

This is Cashew, my elderly three-legged beagle rescue. She loves my writing, and I know she’s not lying just because she wants another treat.

The Sunday New York Times ran an obituary about someone I’d never heard of, but the headline sucked me right in: .

I learned that Duffy had written The World As I Found It, which I’ve never read, but which was lauded in a way every single writer who has ever lived would find gratifying: A slew of other good writers agreed it was great.

Here’s the depressing part: He published only three books in his lifetime. The rest of the time, he worked mundane jobs like security guard and speechwriter and occasionally wrote magazine pieces.

Many of us on Medium aspire to make a living as writers. Some of us (me) are former newspaper journalists or self-publish genre novels under pen names (me) or blog (me) or take every freelance copywriting or proofreading or SEO gig they can get (me) or write magazine pieces (me) and some of us will make a good living from this (not me). Some of us have a Serious Novel we keep polishing and sending to agents (me again).

When I read Stephen Markley’s debut novel recently, I was struck by something he said in the end notes: “……