Don’t Read Proust. Read Me.

There’s a moment when a writer might have to say it.

A couple decades ago, as an undergraduate, I wrote a short story to apply for a fiction writing workshop taught by Ben Marcus through my university’s English department. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but I wrote a story that seized my own attention and spoke to my own interests in that moment.

At the beginning of class, he told the students he’d chosen us because our stories had fascinated him. “Fascination” was the theme of his lecture that day. The reader must feel that “something is at stake.”

Just about anything we can value—survival, family, romance, career, money, honor, loyalty, to name a few—can be at stake in fiction.

One thing that’s at stake for many writers in our real lives, though, is a self-centered concern: the confidence that we are, really and truly, writers. And so I am telling you this true story about when I knew I was a writer.

It’s important to read books written by our contemporaries, Marcus told us during the undergraduate workshop. It’s part of our education, but also, if we hope for our contemporaries to read us, it’s just basically fair that we read their work, too.

And he warned us there’s inevitable hubris in the task, especially at the point when we’re offering our finished book to readers. There are already enough excellent books to fill many lifetimes of reading. When we publish a new book, we’re competing…