Maria Popova writes about how the novelist found the courage to turn her back on an editor's job to focus on fiction: "Cather was excellent at the job, enjoyed being called an 'executive,' and couldn’t deny the gratifications of the attractive pay. But she eventually came to feel that the hamster wheel of journalistic productivity drained her creative capacity, steering her further from her calling as a literary writer. And yet she remained unable to tear herself away."
January 3, 2016
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![Willa Cather by Photographer: Aime Dupont Studio, New York [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWilla_Cather_ca._1912_wearing_necklace_from_Sarah_Orne_Jewett.jpg){kind=link}