I think mining is a really primitive way of making a living. You gouge it out of the earth and you ship it away. It can never be sustainable: unlike a forest, where you can say “Well, we plant two trees for every one cut and we leave behind the nests and the habitats, we […]

Whenever people ask, So do you make a living from your writing, I feel obscurely coal-hauled, if not outright keel-hauled. Does anyone ask this question of an architect, a dentist? It’s so personal and somehow lip-smackingly censorious. I hear behind it two subtext questions: 2: “So. Is your writing any good?” and 3: “And am […]