Dorothy Parker was never wrong

I started writing, in earnest, because I thought I had something special to say. I made it my career when I realized I didn’t.

The writer’s way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?
The New York Times, 1957

When I was a tender, young writer, this quote offended my tender, young sensibilities.

I was a cocksure ingenue, ready for the labors of Hercules — if it led to my initiation into the mystical, holy cabal of writers. Writers who both shape and bear witness to all which is human, true, and universal. There could be no profession more gracious or full of grace.

I was ready to make literature.

A fiercely precocious child on the autism spectrum, I read greedily, collecting and cataloging words and phrases. For their elegance, sure, I had aesthetics. But my primary love was in their difficult precision.

Not much else satisfied me, or still does, than rendering reality — slippery, sentimental reality — in absolute and unmistakable terms.