{"id":5204,"date":"2012-12-07T12:24:16","date_gmt":"2012-12-07T20:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/?p=5204"},"modified":"2012-12-07T12:24:16","modified_gmt":"2012-12-07T20:24:16","slug":"from-michael-lewis-to-montaigne-the-best-writers-first-live-an-interesting-life-newstatesman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/from-michael-lewis-to-montaigne-the-best-writers-first-live-an-interesting-life-newstatesman\/","title":{"rendered":"From Michael Lewis to Montaigne, the best writers first live an interesting life &#8211; NewStatesman"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>That is one of the brilliant arguments in Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb\u2019s new book. Taleb himself started writing when he was still a trader. His day job bought him freedom, time and autonomy to follow his intellectual passions. He wrote as he chose. Taleb is not alone. Stendhal was a diplomat, Trollope worked as a civil servant for the Post Office, Kafka was employed by an insurance company.<\/p>\n<p>Just do something<\/p>\n<p>Taleb\u2019s argument makes me feel better about the awkwardness I suffer when I am asked how to pursue a \u201ccareer\u201d in writing. I\u2019ve always wanted to say this: \u201cDon\u2019t! If you really want to write, then do so. Just don\u2019t view it as a prearranged career, a battle campaign to be planned. Writing isn\u2019t like that. Perhaps you need to do something else first.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/culture\/culture\/2012\/11\/michael-lewis-montaigne-best-writers-first-live-interesting-life\">From Michael Lewis to Montaigne, the best writers first live an interesting life<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That is one of the brilliant arguments in Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb\u2019s new book. Taleb himself started writing when he was still a trader. His day job bought him freedom, time and autonomy to follow his intellectual passions. He wrote as he chose. Taleb is not alone. Stendhal was a diplomat, Trollope worked as a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[484],"tags":[573],"class_list":["post-5204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antifragile","tag-ed-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5204"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5206,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5204\/revisions\/5206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}