Writing professionally, or even just aspiring to write professionally, requires a weird combination of hubris and humility. You have to be willing to believe, at least for the 15 minutes it takes to put together and send out your submission, that the stuff you make up and write down is so fascinating that thousands or tens of thousands of people would pay good money to read it. The Hollywood Bowl has a seating capacity of about 18,000. A modestly successful midlist novelist or someone who sells a story to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction reaches more readers than that with a single book. Who the hell do we think we are? Continue reading Wait, you’re not a real writer at all! →