on writing and reading and literary fandom and famedom and a searing insight I learned from the genius that is Elizabeth Strout

(which boils down to attachment is desire and desire leads to suffering and suffering leads to something-something-something, but the point is it applies to all of us, i promise)

I gave an author’s talk at a writer’s salon last week. It was one of those things where the host and writer sit in two chairs at the front and have a conversation as if they are alone and then afterward the audience reappear and ask questions.

‘A fireside chat,’ I believe it’s called, although there was no fire place.

God knows anything is better than a reading. If I wanted to hear a writer read from their book I’d just spend and Audible credit.

Surely this is true of everyone?

Anyway, the talk was the first of a writing salon series hosted by my friend Christina and the guests were mostly people she’d met over the past years taking various workshops and classes. Writing classes and workshops are big business these days in publishing. The ones that Christina goes to are exclusive and hard to get into, not just for money reasons. They are held in luxury hotels and country houses with swimming pools in Southern Europe. Every professional or aspiring writer I know is either teaching one of these workshops or starting one or taking one or trying to get into one or hoping the next one will work. Like many jobbing writers I have mixed feelings about these courses.