Jared Bartman. [New York Times illustration]

“Is it ever easier?” a young writer asked me recently. “Do you ever grow a thicker skin?” She was suffering because an essay she’d written about the death of her mother had been rejected by every outlet that conceivably might publish it. I had no answer, so I told her a story. Just before the outbreak of Covid, the novelist and short story writer Nathan Englander had moved into my neighborhood in Toronto, and we would sometimes sit around my backyard firepit, drinking and complaining. “Is it ever easier?” I asked him one night. “Do you ever grow a thicker skin?” Englander had no answer, so he told me a story. He had once been at dinner with Philip Roth. “Is it ever easier?” he asked Roth. “My skin will get thicker with each book, right?”

(Stephen Marche, “A Writer’s Lament: The Better You Write, the More You Will Fail,” New York Times, 2-11-23)

(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved