Legendary writer, Jim Harrison, speaking last June with interviewer extraordinaire, Robert Birnbaum provides some great advice for young writers.
JH: …you have to be giving your entire life to this because that’s the only way it’s possible. This can’t be an avocation. It’s the whole thing. Or nothing.
RB: And what do they (the young writers asking for advice) say?
JH: Most of them, that’s very intimidating. They really haven’t wanted to commit to it, to that extent. But they have to. It’s a strange thing—I didn’t want to understand it when I first read it but I was 19 or something—Dylan Thomas said in order to be a poet or a writer you have to be willing to fall on your face over and over and over. Everybody wants to be cool—