Flexibility

A huge advantage for me is that I’m from a city in turmoil like Detroit, where all comforts  and complacencies were destroyed. For years, as auto companies and accompanying businesses declined, people were told, “Change or die.” I learned to reinvent myself just to survive. I’ve gone through six or seven “careers.” I’m not tied to being a writer, much less a particular kind of writer. Zeenster, essayist, activist, poet, promoter, performer, fiction writer—I try to do it all. (Then again, many think I’m not a writer at all.)

The lit game will change drastically. Writers need flexibility about their art and themselves, if they’re to negotiate their small ships through difficult shoals.