Local markets for literary fiction remain underdeveloped; the metropolis often holds out the only real possibility of a professional writing career.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It's never really easy to be successful as a writer when you're trying to write literary fiction. You've already limited your readership limited by that choice.
Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.
A writer can't afford to just focus on writing and leave marketing aside in today's competitive market.
I really think more fledgling novelists - and many current and even established novelists - should get out into the real world and cover local politics, sports, culture, and crime and write it up on deadline.
I think new writers everywhere need opportunities to get published.
Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.
I am not a pure fiction writer, nor am I an academic writer. Somehow I ended up in this blended area of literary journalism.
Writing is a struggle no matter what the genre.
By embracing a label such as 'non-fiction,' the creative writing community has signaled to the world that what goes on in this genre is at best utilitarian and at worst an utter mystery. We have segregated the genre from art.
I think fiction writers should work. If you have a job and are not living off advances or grants, you never have to make concessions in your writing, ever.