The July 2008 issue of The Sun Magazine features an interview with Wendell Berry, a poet and farmer who (to vastly oversimply the matter) writes about environmentalism, farming, and economics on the human scale.
One of the topics he addresses in the article - "making it" as a writer. My favorite takeaways:
- Accept that you can make a good life without being a writer at all.
- Practice is essential.
- If you don't take pleasure in writing - despite the frustrations - go ahead and quit!
- Real reading is a kind of work.
- Every writer must work out for him/herself how to make a living, if supplementing writing income is necessary. (Despite his acclaim, he says that he has always needed a third source of income besides writing and farming.)
- Reducing costs makes life more complex, not simpler.
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