When you really want to write

Last weekend, at the Newport wedding of some art world friends, almost everyone at our table turned out to be a writer of something: novels, non-fiction books, plays, screenplays articles (PowerPoint doesn’t count). Other writers:
Clare Morrall, whose fifth novel was the first one published (by a tiny press, in a first run of 2,000), has just been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Louisa Young tells how she gave up her journalism career to become a novelist after an inspiring encounter with Johnny Cash. “”You have to be what you are,” Cash told her. “Whatever you are, you gotta be it.”
The New Yorker Festival is this weekend, about which Roger Angell states, “Writers should not sit alone and tremble in the dark.” The Festival, of course, features writers sitting together, on stages, trembling in the dark, and guiltily enjoying their sojourn in fandom.