Write in the face of adversity

There will be people in your life who will try to tell you you’re wrong, who will frown upon your writing or flat-out tell you that you should stop. They could be well-meaning people, like your friends and family, who think they're doing you a favor by stopping you from a miserable existence and by persuading you to get a stable job and get paid. They could be strangers you've just met. And they could be anyone in between.

If all writers listened to those people, we’d have no books and no wri...