. I don’t know how long I can survive in captivity. –David Gessner So I’ve never read or heard of David Gessner (picutred) before, but he wrote this really fascinating article in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine about being a former full time writer that teaches writing to college and/or grad students. Now, until a couple of years ago I felt that I wasn’t “good enough” to teach writing. I mumble, I trail off, public speaking makes me nervous, really bad writing makes me mad, and my copy editing skills aren’t nearly what they used to be. Of course, this was all before I actually went to graduate school for writing and realized that none of those things really stand in the way of being a good writing professor if you have know-how and can at that very least make your edit points understood. Also, university teaching, Gessner points out, has all sorts of sexy perks, including insurance, students who actually want to learn what you’re teaching, and perhaps most important to the lonely writer, these things called hallways, behind the doors of which are other people. And though you could argue that you no longer have time to do your own writing, Gessner argues back that eating up time is actually another perk of a university job: Young writers think all they need is time, but give them that time and watch them implode. After all, there’s something basically insane about sitting at a desk and talking to yourself all day, and there’s a reason that writers are second only to medical students in instances of hypochondria. In isolation, our minds turn on us pretty quickly. Coming off a writing weekend, during which I nearly became completely feral while my husband, CH was...