Let’s imagine that you’re an aspiring writer from Lincoln, Nebraska.
You move to New York and publish two well-received novels in your twenties. You work a few years on contract at MGM, writing movie scripts (nothing gets made while you’re there). Then you move back to New York and spend the next decade writing light short stories—often satires or romances—for popular magazines. You write another novel, but your publisher passes, saying (essentially) that your work has no depth. After a breakup, you suffer a severe depression, spend two years in a mental asylum.
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