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I came to the conclusion that I am not a fiction writer.

I began writing fiction when I started running out of material in my own life.

I quit my job just to quit. I didn't quit my job to write fiction. I just didn't want to work anymore.

I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.

I wasn't trained to write non-fiction.

Early on, I tried fiction, but I wasn't very good at it. I wrote a very bad novel that is thankfully sitting in a drawer somewhere.

My work was entirely nonfiction.

I started seriously applying myself to writing fiction immediately after I finished graduate school. By 'seriously,' I mean that, instead of noodling along on a story, finishing it or not as the mood struck me, I set out to complete what I started, to polish it to the best of my ability, and to send out the finished story.

I'm a writer, and what I do is write. I wasn't able to do anything else.