Thus spake Mark Bertrand:

“Things that don’t matter don’t keep getting done. Things that do become second nature. The key to any discipline, I suppose, is figuring how to make it matter.”

So if we want to be writers, we must decide writing is what we actually want to do. And whatever work that must go around the writing too must matter–the research, the market opportunities, and the spiritual nurturing that keeps us closer the Lover of our souls.

“Writers already lead uncomfortably quantified lives, measuring our worth in the number of words written today, in the number of books in print and how well they’ve sold. All of these metrics speak to one kind of quality –– my quality of life –– without addressing another, the quality of my work. The best written books aren’t always the bestselling…”

Far more than any philosophical writing, Bertrand says reading novels exposes and explores him in unexpected ways. “In novels I face up to things I never seem to in other kinds of writing.”