Succeed or Fail, Writers Always Lose
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
According to Doris Lessing, writers are in a lose/lose situation. Lindesay Irvine’s blog in The Guardian describes how most (presumably fiction) writers are doomed to struggle. And those few that do manage to succeed must contend with drugs, divorce, and depression, she quotes Joseph Heller as saying. (How apt from the author of Catch-22…)
And Doris Lessing? Apparently she does not write any more, but simply spends her time giving interviews and sitting for photos.
Quite a depressing view, if it wasn’t so funny. I mean, this whole article embodies the two main fears writers have: fear of failure, and fear of success. Reading this is like making an arachnophobe watch some goofy stuffed spider bouncing in the corner of a dollar store — ridiculous, yet oddly unsettling.
Take a read yourself and let us know what you think. Can writers ever win? And is getting your picture taken “losing”?
~Graham
