The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Mysteries of a Writer's Brain

Nina wonders if the financial downturn will force more women to pursue writing careers in order to become breadwinners, but I don't believe anyone turns to the life of letters to ward off economic calamity. While writing skills can indeed be marketable (a young stay-at-home mom I know takes projects translating academic research into coherent grant proposals and reports), nobody would choose a writing profession for the money. It has worse hourly wages than busing tables, and there's no tip out. Despairingly, as difficult and time-consuming the labor of prose, many writers consider it a gift to get paid at all. A writer writes, at the core, because she needs to hear her voice on the page and see her thoughts expressed on the computer screen. You write because the muse tells you that you must.

That said, I hope Emily's skepticism that Facebook "infantilizes" human brains and impairs attention spans is well-placed. I worry a little that cell-phone best-sellers popular in Japan are already a sign of the digital impact on the printed word, and tomorrow's written narrative will be 10 consecutive status updates.