On Writing Advice and the People Who Give It

Remember The New Yorker . You subscribed because you liked it. Then it taunted you with its endless words, pages and pages demanding to be read. It reminded you of all the time you didn’t have to spend reading The New Yorker . Whenever you glimpsed the growing pile, you felt mild panic. Every time you recycled an unread issue, you felt like a waste... See more

like the man in Robert Frost’s poem, took the less travelled path, then continued up, half running, half walking, towards the brow of the hill, thinking how Frost’s poem had been misconstrued as an argument for taking less obvious choices in life, when in fact it had simply been meant as a joke about an indecisive friend. I had read somewhere that

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She told me that most cleaners at the hostel were artists and often collaborated on projects. But when I told her I was a writer, she didn’t bother to ask what kind. Was it because I wasn’t dressed like a Berlin artist (my pants were black but my T-shirt was white) (and I don’t own any combat boots) or could she tell from my eyes that I haven’t wri

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