Let’s just get one thing out of the way right now: None of us knows what we’re doing. By us, I mean, of course, writers — though it’s also possibly true for plumbers, mathematicians, hang glider pilots, and dragon tamers, too. One suspects that a miasma of cluelessness hangs about every human being like a cloud of clumsy bumblebees. But maybe not! Maybe they all know what’s up. All I
can tell you is, we writers don’t know what the sweet hot hell we’re doing.
Oh, we’ll tell you we know what we’re doing. We’ll give you as much writing advice as you want. We’ll trumpet our book proposals before you. We’ll write essays like the one I’m writing
right here, right now. But it’s all artifice.
I don’t mean to suggest that writers cannot write...