This story has been getting around: Philip Roth advises young published writer to get out while he's ahead:
I would quit while you’re ahead. Really, it’s an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it’s not any good. I would say just stop now. You don’t want to do this to yourself. That’s my advice to you.
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) responds:
... maybe it's just vanity that makes authors gripe so much about their ordeal. Maybe writers have simply come to believe themselves to be so very special, and their work so very important, that they can't imagine anybody else capable of doing it: You, little one, could never possibly create what I have created, or withstand all that I have withstood, so you'd best not try at all.
Writer Lauren B. Davis sums it all up nicely in her blog. Best to start here. The proper response, she says, is to dig in and say: You had me at torture.
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