WRITERS: YOUR WORK IS NOT A LOTTERY TICKET

Some writers think about their careers and advancement in a rather curious way.

It can be comforting for the writer in his or her ascendancy to think of career advancement as largely luck-related. That it's a matter of writing novel after novel - or script after script - and firing them into a machine full of other National Lottery balls, which may one day be picked out.

This view is, at best, complacent and at worst, dangerous - at least for the writer who holds it. One thing's for sure: if it...