Over pints, a writer friend of mine confessed his plans to apply to law schools. He said, “I’ve realized writing is the least important thing I do” and went on to remind me that everyone is reading blogs (ahem) instead of books anyway. I wanted to scream “You traitor!” but instead I sank back in the booth, sipped my beer, and muttered “Really?”

And there are more things I wanted to say but didn’t:

Won’t you miss out on discovering what it is you will say? (Writers often don’t know, until it’s on the page.)

Won’t the rest of us miss out on discovering what you will say?

Certainly you weren’t in it for the money, right?

Don’t you feel a part of you withers with each month you don’t make time to jot down a few lines?

Aren’t you afraid this is soul suicide?

I didn’t ask because these are the questions I was busily asking myself. In this precarious position of trying to make a life of art, it is easy to adopt others’ cynicism as our own, and it can be tempting to give up. We wonder, is this all just self-serving? Would I be better off with a desk job and a therapist? Wouldn’t I eliminate a whole file in my cabinet of things to worry about if I were no longer fretting over Time to Create? How dare I be so selfish as to spend time “creating”! People are starving. People are killing each other.

If I dwell on the starving and killing long enough, I’m liable to end it all here and now. So what can I do? How can I help? How can I write and help? I won’t admit any great wisdom on the subject. What I do know is that art has and does change perspectives, inform policy, expose the underexposed, and help people to feel less alone. These are not nothing. Also, art keeps those of us with the compulsion to make it from withering. Surely we are better citizens when all our synapses are firing with vibrant energy and when our bodies feel nurtured and intact.

Another reason I didn’t bombard my friend with the list of questions about quitting is because, in the moment, I was ashamed to think of myself as actively pursuing a writing career. He had unintentionally shot me down. It was a reminder to me that whenever we express thoughts of trying something else, it’s important to have a little sensitivity to those still trying to make a go of art.

And what of my friend? Should I have tried to convince him to “stay”? It’s a little silly, these lines we draw. One doesn’t stick with or leave the art world like a club. The idea of a departure has much more to do with identity than with the reality (which is that, for a lot of us, sometimes we spend lots of time making art and sometimes we do other things—make money, be with family, whatever). We come and we go; there are no official dues. In hindsight, I think I should have reminded my friend that his fiction has made me cry. I should have told him to do what makes sense now. I should have said that the departure need not be forever.