Lily Herd writes in TLS: ‘Over and over, she [Susan Orlean] presents successful journalism as an occupation into which the writer must throw themselves completely – although it helps when the support is limitless. In discussing a story about a cab driver who was also the king of a Ghanaian tribe living in New York with Robert Gottlieb at the New Yorker, “I asked him when the story was due. ‘When it’s finished,’ he said, Sphinx-like. Would I have an expense budget? ‘Spend what you think is necessary.’ Should I go to Ghana with Mr. Oppong? ‘If you think you should, then you should.’”

A limitless budget is probably a better idea than limitless time.

Orlean paraphrases E.B. White: ‘whenever luck happened, I was there to welcome it.’

Be ready to welcome luck. That’s what writers and non-writers should do all the time. Sometimes you should also welcome haplessness, once a month or so.

(a sf 2063)