ON WRITING AND FAILURE TPB – STEPHEN MARCHE

Good writers offer advice. Great writers offer condolences If you want to be a writer, then you d better be ready to hurl yourself at the door. That s the message from Stephen Marche in this irresistibly droll broadside. Perseverance, in the teeth of rejection, forms the essence of a writer s life. It s what it takes, so no whining. Even the greatest of writers grapple with failure. Marche s provocative, often very funny vignettes range through literary history from Samuel Johnson ( broke as f*ck ) to Jane Austen s lacklustre publishing deals, to Dostoevsky facing mock-execution. The trick is to endure. As James Baldwin famously exhorts us: Write. Find a way to keep alive and write. For new and seasoned writers, Marche s words are salutary and, in a paradoxical way, consoling. All writers are up against it. Success is just an attire.