Matthew’s essay, a call to arms for the life of a starving writer, hit home for me. Responding to Josh Kline’s October article, Matthew cites how we’re in the biggest culture recession in generations. People say no one’s writing “good” books anymore, which might be another way of saying nobody’s writing “major” books anymore. This isn’t to say that the minor stuff—where nearly the entirety of the personal essay genre resides—isn’t good.

Let’s face it, it’s not a good time to be a writer. No matter how you view it, arts need funding to be healthier, to have a more prominent place in society. Writers need to be able to support themselves off of their practice to devote their time and attention to it. So when the market and infrastructure goes down, the quality goes down. We’re a declining nation, and our culture industries are showing that.

This might be a call to cultivating a life as a minor writer. A writer I admire once told me that “the only pleasure you can guarantee from writing is the pleasure you get from it.” This is why I tell people that if you don’t enjoy writing, then don’t do it, there aren’t enough reasons to write what you don’t enjoy.

I’m still one of the most successful writers in my social sphere, and I’m not complaining, but I’m certainly not a major writer. I thought I was hot shit when my book Mean Boys sold 4000 copies in less than a year. You want to know how many Ocean Vuong sells in a single week? 35,000.

Still, living life as “a minor writer” has been rewarding, and worthwhile. The community it brought into my life justified it. Training my mind and capacity for beauty just for the pleasure of using my human faculties at their capacity is a Kantian ideal, and I live by it. Most of the writing I do these days is unpaid, and I’m not in a hurry to change that—the pleasure I get from it sustains the practice, I don’t need clicks or sales or fame or awards. I still have the best fans, cooler and smarter than me—I think most writers would be jealous of me for that. Like Matthew, I don’t make a lot of money and my expenses are low. I find ways to live a charmed life.