Writing Still, the people want to read about themselves. Not your experience, but theirs, or that which you can recreate for them from your limited knowledge of their expectations of themselves. And though you know you know them not at all, not really, there is little room for error. And the greatest of virtues is to entertain them as you inform them of what they don’t know they already know. That’s the sellable stuff. But this is my thinking: that the writer is most like an arrogant butcher, believing he cleaves out for them the best cuts they have to offer and can stomach, drained of all familiar humor, the blade so sharp they don’t notice his lack of practicable skill, nor that the meal smacks so cannibal. An artist who despite all evidence available is never satisfied by his own puny experience remaining forever in existential crisis, and would if it were possible become his own autopsist.