If you need not earn much, you are at liberty to write, and write, and write. I was by then already at work on my second novel, The Essex Serpent, but always dogged by a curious sense of foolishness. I was poor, and getting poorer: what was I thinking, staring at the wall making things up, when I could do something both more useful and more remunerative? Writing felt, obscurely, like a moral failing. Writers are not owed a living any more than other artists, and financial prizes are not precisely necessary.

Source: The Guardian April 27, 2018 06:56 UTC