In case you wondered...

...Is Self-Loathing a Requirement for Writers?

My first real experience of self-­loathing as a writer occurred not during my leaner years, when getting published at all felt like an ordeal, but when I began to achieve some measure of success. Though I’d never had anything handed to me — not internships, not jobs, not professional connections or plum assignments — the more I accomplished professionally, the more aware I became of just how unmeritocratic the publishing industry could be; how so much about who sells books, and for what kind of advance, and to whom, is the result of privilege — educational, economic, racial, gendered. The fact that I’d carved out some small space in that world, I realized, probably had as much to do with luck and positioning as it did with talent.