The White Man's Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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If you want to be a writer, you should attend an Ivy League university, where you roommate happens to be the nephew of a senior editor at Knopf, and you should go on to get a summer internship in New York City. This internship will not be paid, and unfortunately you will have to suffer the indignity of living in an apartment that your parents pay for. But soon, your struggles will pay off, and you will be accepted at one of the nation's most prestigious MFA programs.

If you can't do all of that, I hate to say it, but it sounds like you won't have the commitment and discipline necessary to make it as a writer.

teach you everything you need to know to become the chain-smokin, coffee-drinking, Proust-quoting, award-winning writer you've always known you should be...

Not a white man? Not to worry. The White Male Writer isn't a hard-and-fast demographic; it's a state of mind...