I live four doors down from a well-known Chicago bar called Empty Bottle, that hosts bands that play music that makes me grateful for its mostly soundproof walls.

(But if you imagine it must be gargoyles in there listening to that music, a lot of my friends love the place—and a couple of them sometimes play there. Also, I encountered an Empty Bottle reveler who one night had climbed the tree outside my second-story bedroom window. His face was about 12 feet from mine and at eye level when, not wanting to startle him into a tragic fall, I whispered that he ought to quiet down so I could sleep. “Oh my gosh, I am so sorry!” He clambered down hurriedly and walked off, bashfully saying over his shoulder, “Have a good night, sir!”)

In response to a new survey about AI and writing, someone wrote: “Human paced [writing] is a book a year and I have ideas for 60 books at least. I want to explore all these worlds in my head and share them before I die.”

And suddenly I remembered:

The month I turned 23, I moved to Chicago, arriving

complete with an English degree and 100 good books in my head,

and ready to be a big writer.

(It was Oak Park, actually—a near-western suburb where Hemingway grew up

and soon left, famously describing its “wide lawns and narrow minds.”)

As soon as I got an apartment larger than one room, I made an office

of a closet, four or five feet wide and 10 feet long.

I bought a new Mac, built a skinny little desk to set it on,

stocked that desk with a dictionary, a thesaurus and a big ashtray.

Boy, did I make a lot of use of that ashtray in those early coffee mornings

before going to my day job at the little trade publisher downtown,

trying to write that first novel. (A room that small fills up with smoke fast,

especially when you light a new one every time you’re stuck for an idea

and you’re totally and completely stuck for any real ideas at all, goddamnit.)

At some point, I complained to my much older sister Cindy that

the Mac was yellowing faster than the novel was writing.

“You need some experience,” she said with the most matter-of-fact of shrugs,

as if she was telling me my tire was flat because it had a leak.

Goddamn, I resented that remark, because I understood it meant

I was not Wolfgang Mozart (or even Jay McInerney)

and that I would have to forage for berries and shoot squirrels for 10 or 20 years,

to become a writer even good enough to write a thing like this.

Hemingway also said the “the most essential gift for a good writer is

a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.”

As opposed to a shit creator.