"Why Do We Write?"

In the spirit of the WGA’s “Why We Write” campaign, I thought I’d share this letter from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scribners, on the occasion of the publication of “The Great Gatsby.” Ah—the writer’s life! Enjoy.


Marseille, en route to Paris
Early April 1925
Dear Max:
Your telegram depressed me—I hope I’ll find better news in Paris and am wiring you from Lyons. There’s nothing to say until I hear more. If the book fails commercially it will be from one of two reasons or both
1st The title is only fair, rather bad than good.
2nd And most important—the book contains no important woman character and women control the fiction market at present. I don’t think the unhappy end matters particularly.
It will have to sell 20,000 copies to wipe out my debt to you. I think it will do that all right—but my hope was it would do 75,000. This week will tell.

In all events I have a book of good stories for this fall. Now I shall write some cheap ones until I’ve accumulated enough for my next novel. When that is finished and published I’ll wait and see. If it will support me with no more intervals of trash I’ll go on as a novelist. If not I’m going to quit, come home, go to Hollywood and learn the movie business. I can’t reduce our scale of living and I can’t stand this financial insecurity. Anyhow there’s no point in trying to be an artist if you can’t do your best. I had my chance back in 1920 to start my life on a sensible scale and I lost it and so I’ll have to pay the penalty. Then perhaps at 40 I can start writing again without this constant worry and interruption

Yours in great depression
Scott