To die your whole life. Despite the morbidity, I can’t think of a better definition of the writing life. There’s something about writing that demands a leave-taking, an abandonment of the world, paradoxically, in order to see it clearly. This retreat has to be accomplished without severing the vital connection to the world, and to people, that feeds the imagination. It’s a difficult balance. And here is where these ruminations about writing touch on morality. The same constraints to writing well are also constraints to living fully.
In his New Yorker advice to young writers, Jeffrey Eugenides echoes Henry Miller on creative death and Christopher Hitchens on writing as if posthumously.
More noteworthy writing advice here.
