"Results [of the writing life] vary. Side effects range from obscurity to the Nobel Prize."

"It is not experimental but traditional work that wins Hugo and Nebula awards within the field."

"It makes them happy to give [lifetime achievement awards] to me. And they go out in the shed, but the people don't know that."

"Charles McGrath wrote in The New York Times about his experience of being a judge for the National Book Awards. ... He didn't entirely enjoy the task.  The title of his article was 'Caution: Reading Can Be Hazardous.'  Of the numerous volumes he had to read, he wrote, 'There were moments when I began to doubt the whole enterprise of fiction writing itself.  Does the world really need hundreds and hundreds of new novels or story collections every year, especially when so many of them are so similar?  Eventually, I had trouble keeping all the stories straight, and in my mind—and even in my dreams occasionally—the book overlapped, with couples failing to understand each other over and over again, and families endlessly dumping their woes onto the next generation.'  McGrath's frustration here would seem to be about subject matter.  Why always the oh-so-familiar psychology of couples and families?"

"The Oscars are like a political campaign.  Winning an Oscar is partly to do with how good your film is and partly to do with how tenacious you are during awards season."

"One day, I had a great idea for a mystery.  I knew it was a good idea; I got goosebumps and became obsessed.  I announced to my husband, 'I'm going to write a mystery.'  He was sweetly skeptical, but supportive, and I was naively compelled to write it.  I had no idea what I was doing, but I thought—I've read a million mysteries!  I'll learn.  I was 55 years old, and that book turned out to be Prime Time, which won the Agatha for Best First Novel."

"When you write a book, and when it's first published, even if people love it and it wins awards, there's no guarantee it'll be long lived."

"It took me 20 years of writing before I could write [Pulitzer Prize-winning] The Sympathizer.  I got to that point by writing a lot, reading a lot, and enduring a lot."

"Writing fiction, or at least trying to make a living by writing fiction, creates new ways for the writer to experience failure.  At first I was simply writing stories no one liked.  Then, once I got better, I started sending out the good stories to literary journals and getting rejected.  Then, once I started getting acceptances, I began receiving queries from agents who would then tell me I was not 'there' yet.  Then, once I got an agent, a year passed before he told me I was not progressing the way he had hoped, and we agreed to end our relationship.  Once I started writing short stories that were pretty good, everyone told me I really needed to write a novel.  Once I started writing short stories that were pretty good, everyone told me I really needed to write a novel.  Once I wrote a novel, it was rejected by everyone who read it.  Once I got enough publications to start applying for grants and awards, I didn't even come close to receiving any of them.  It was a weird cycle in which, instead of feeling happy I was getting better as a writer, I kept realizing how little I had actually progressed in the ways I started to quantify as success."

The View from the Cheap Seats

What is success in the 21st century? It's novels that invent their own unique form, spring from a personal place, enact a passionate intent, and prove it by reaching a broad readership. It's both great reviews and great sales. It's moving hearts and changing minds. It's winning accolades and winning the devotion of readers. It's finding a way through your fiction to convey what you alone see, yet we all come to accept as the truth.

"Why am I getting critically reviewed, a lot of award nominations, a lot of recognition, but [not] selling?  What I started realizing was, I wasn't branded.  I just didn't have a big enough audience."

"It's about a writer [Pultizer Prize winner Gilbert King] who chose to do the work that made him proud rather than trying to please others, and deciding to be a writer rather than a Writer."