The Risk of Writing from Experience

How Fitzgerald's Final Novel Ruined Him

Two years ago I told my cousin that I wanted to make it as a fiction writer. She must have spent months searching, but, finally, she succeeded in finding a book sanguine about the prospects. For Christmas she gifted me Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami, and I devoured it like a man starving. Not only was I convinced of his technical advice, but,…