I'm a month into my 30s, an age I always looked forward to because by then I should have my life together, know what I want, know my purpose, and know who I am.

As is the irony of life, my life is in shambles, I am unemployed (for almost a year!) and in debt. I want to be a paid television writer. I think writing is part of my life's purpose, but I haven't had any success due to a series of compulsively squandered job opportunities and years hiding in the petrifying fear of showing up to my career -- all of which I blamed on my youth. I am still, at the age of 30, on the square before square one while many of my peers have passed me by and are writing on successful shows.

Even though I was wrong about most of what achieving 30 would mean, I, with the help of five years in a 12-step program, thought I knew who I was, or at least what I was not. I recently discovered I qualified for three additional programs in addition to my first. So, instead of victorious self-awareness, I've had a whole new surprising part of me exposed, a part that was a total mystery, one of which is my debtor behavior.  

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I am a writer. I love to write, and I make my living from writing, in journalism. I gave up a full-time newspaper job to freelance some years ago, which in many ways (not financially) was a great move. So I write and research and work hard every day, pretty much, and hundreds, thousands of words flow easily, which are then published in newspapers, magazines, online. It's great; it's so satisfying to make a well-crafted piece of work.

Yet I don't feel like a real writer. Both a screenplay based on a true story and a novel based on my own early life came grinding to a halt. Without being egotistical, I've been around long enough to know they are both excellent topics, great stories. But I just freeze up after three chapters or a couple of acts. I can't seem to keep going. The bio-novel made me incredibly anxious, bringing up memories I don't want to deal with but must to get them on the page. So I tried it as nonfiction, a pop-culture documentary, switching the focus somewhat and looking at events from a more journalistic angle. Nup.

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I really need your help. You're a well-read man who writes and teaches writing, and I'm a writer with a project that isn't going where I'd want it to.

I recently finished a manuscript for a novel, that I started shipping off to publishers around nine months ago. Most of the publishers shipped it right back with no explanation, but one gave me a three-page letter with a lot of helpful advice, and then this line toward the end of the letter: "We would recommend the writer to rewrite the manuscript, and send it to our YA-department."

Why don't you just hold this sword for me so I can fall on it properly? Receiving personal feedback is excellent. Everything would in fact be excellent had they just not written that last line.

Yes, many young adult novels are great. The Harry Potter books, for instance, are brilliant, and clearly work for all ages. However, I haven't written a young adult novel, and if I try to turn my manuscript into one, that means I'll have to rip out all of the subtext and symbolism, which frankly is the reason why the manuscript exists in the first place. I'm completely willing to rewrite the entire thing in a multitude of ways, but to turn it into a YA novel would mean not just removing some parts, but to castrate the entire plot.

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Achebe describes with marvelous clarity -- in the essays of "Morning Yet on Creation Day" and "Hopes and Impediments" -- how he began to write partly in response to distorted Western views of Africa. Contesting Europe's invention of the "dark continent," Achebe retold the story of colonization from a Nigerian viewpoint, portraying a lost society warmly without overidealizing it. He aimed to restore the humanity of Africans -- both in their own eyes and those of Western readers. While early critics overemphasized the novel's anthropological aspects, with "Things Fall Apart" Achebe also pioneered the fusion of Ibo folklore and idioms with the Western novel, arriving at an African aesthetic in which the art of storytelling is central to the tale. As he wrote: "Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten."

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I went to Los Angeles to become a writer. I'd written three features before I'd arrived, but they were the bushiest of the bush league. A couple years in, I got lucky and got a job in TV and therefore switched gears to working on TV spec scripts. I wrote six or seven of those, each still quite bush league, and I started getting jobs as a writer's assistant. Knowing I could be called upon to offer material in those meetings (you're always being tested for writerly aptitude), I got nervous and scared, and pretty soon, I was getting more and more bound up, to the point where I could see nothing but crap in my writing and couldn't relax enough to be a reliable contributor in the writers' room. It was like trying to get an erection in public -- the harder I tried to relax, the further from relaxation I got. Miserable yet curious about my predicament, I realized that "going to L.A." perhaps had been a coping mechanism for running away from how crappy I felt about myself. My (now ex-) wife wasn't helping when she told me if I couldn't write (or wouldn't, by this point), that our moving to L.A. had been a waste of her life. So I found myself swimming in a vat of santorum composed of doubt, resentment, fear and, most important, self-loathing. I've been doing Zen for a few years, which has forced me to see that my "ambition" may have been merely the foreground distraction of a much deeper, uncertain and unfriendly psychological background. I've had to leave L.A. because of the relentlessly poor job market and took with me two things: the clothes on my back and the aforementioned santorum. A therapist and support groups are probably in order, but your thoughts would be most welcomed.

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Over the past few months, I have written this letter a dozen times. At moments, I would give anything for someone to wave a wand and let me know what I should do, but at the same time, I cannot bring myself to believe there is an easy solution to my issue.

Apparently, I am unlovable on certain levels. When I write this, I do not just mean as a person, but also the efforts of my hands.

My parents were both pedophiles, and I grew up feeling less real than that life-sized doll my mother bought me at age seven so I could have a "friend." When puberty finally rendered me into a monster to them, I was relieved -- but the abuse never stopped. It just changed character. Suddenly I became irredeemable and disgusting. My older brother spent most of my childhood tormenting me, which typically made my parents laugh or chastise me for not fighting back. Even though it pained me beyond words, his uncontrolled anger made me cut off contact with him when I did the same with my parents. My ex-husband spent 12 years of our 14-year marriage encouraging me to be on fertility meds while he knew he had taken measures to never have children (measures about which I knew nothing) because "God told him that He wanted me to be alone." I only found out what he had done when I hit menopause early. God's hatred was how he rationalized his actions when asking me for the divorce. For six months between that request and the marriage ending, he told me nearly every day that he had never loved me or wanted me or even liked me. He had married me out of pity. Given my family, no one else would ever be able to want me. It has been four years since then, and I have only now begun to date again. Finally, I thought I had found someone with whom I could at the very least enjoy physical contact and to whom I could give some delight, and yet he broke up with me so he could go back to the woman who had pureed his heart.

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I'm 27, recently unemployed, living in a "cottage" behind my parents' home, single, in a period of "transition" (career-wise), and for some strange reason I'm in an existential funk that seems so reminiscent of the way I felt back in high school 10 years ago.

First, I'd like to mention my aspirations of becoming a writer. It's something I've only dabbled in over the years, have always received positive feedback in, and I've only in the past couple of years come to the realization that this is my true calling. Everyone I know is supportive.

I studied psychology as an undergrad, enrolled in numerous philosophy courses to satiate my ever-curious soul, read Dostoevsky and Maugham fervently, but I've not the least bit of interest in pursuing a career ... in anything! This may seem a puerile way of thinking, but I'm always asking myself: "What's the point???"

What it boils down to is this: I am not the ambitious type. I truly believe that ambition is an exercise in futility; that Milan Kundera was right on the nose in saying: "Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy."

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I'm a nonfiction writer who has dabbled  in fiction writing over the years. I hope to do more of both, but now I also feel called to write poetry. I enjoy the idea of packing big ideas into small spaces, which is what poetry represents to me. I know there is long-form poetry from "Beowulf" to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," but the more traditional short-form poetry appeals to me. I'm neutral on rhyming poetry, but I think a good poet can make that work without seeming sing-songy.

For now, I'm not necessarily interested in writing for show or exposure, as I am with prose writing. I'm mostly interested in experimenting and flexing my creative muscles in a genre in which I have no experience and thus feel less pressure.

However, I basically don't want to waste my time writing clichés or other crap. Do you have any tips for me? I know it's a balance between being practical by practicing often and letting myself be vulnerable and inspired, but I don't want to go down any side roads that take me to a cul de sac. If I were giving advice to a prose writer, I would offer tips like, your writing will leap off the page if you use active voice, or show, don't tell. Do you have any similar concrete tips for me? Aside from analyzing poetry in school or reading it in the New Yorker, this genre is pretty new for me.

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Jefferson Starship guitarist Slick Aguilar needs a new liver and so David Crosby, Marty Balin and others will be playing a benefit concert for him Sunday, Feb. 24, at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Among those friends playing at the benefit will be my pal from Miami Kevin Hurley. So if you can make it, or if it is sold out, feel free to just donate something.

The following Sunday, March 3, there will be another benefit at the GAMH I care deeply about,  for engineer and producer Tom Mallon. If you ever recorded with Tom or know someone who did, then you will understand the outpouring of love and creativity that news of his illness has sparked.

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You asked for problems with creativity and writing. I will give you the back story first.

I belonged to a writer’s group when I was a student and they kept panning my short stories without feedback so I focused on my tech-writing class. I wrote a couple dozen letters to the editor after that. A three-sentence one made it into the Economist!

I never stopped writing fiction or letters. I read Strunk & White’s 4th ed. ["The Elements of Style" -- ed.] more than a few times, and Kerouac’s and Vonnegut’s tips, and Stephen King’s writing book and have tried to follow his suggestions to write a lot and read a lot. I taught composition for a year at the university level at a teacher’s college in central China and wrote my first novel at my next university gig in China. [After I read Tobias Wolff’s "The Barracks Thief," I wished I'd edited my first novel to a fishbone!]

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I am writing in response to your attack on American poetry in your Washington Post blog today.  Throughout your piece, you forward assumptions based on your own lack of exposure and allow these to stand as truth. I know it is just an opinion blog, but people have been convinced by less, and despite your “blog voice,” I sense you might really believe what you are saying. I will also assume you are sincere in stating: “I hate to type this and I hope that I am wrong.” So I am glad to let you know that poetry is fine. In fact, it is thriving. Let’s look at your charges:

“You can tell that a medium is still vital by posing the question: Can it change anything?”

Your generalization does not specify what kind of “change” you mean. Literal political change? That’s what you go on to suggest. Along with “revolution.”

Be serious. Congress can barely do that. Look what hell the president has to go through to do anything. But you attack American poets. You name none of them except the one you happened to see on TV, and you suggest his whole career is irrelevant to everyone because it is irrelevant to you. And apparently it is irrelevant to you because he does not live up to some high school ideal.

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After agreeing that they work well together, Dunham asked if Apatow tries to get input from the cast members in his latest movie, "This Is 40," a slice of life comedy starring his wife, Leslie Mann, their children and Paul Rudd. The process, he said, starts with "a very intimate conversation over several years about how we feel about our lives, pitching scenes for our characters. What we're really doing is having a conversation with each other, one that's easier to have than if we, say, were talking about the characters."

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Erdrich, 58, has been a published and highly regarded author for nearly 30 years but had never won a National Book Award until being cited Wednesday for her story, the second of a planned trilogy, about an Ojibwe boy and his quest to avenge his mother's rape. A clearly delighted and surprised Erdrich, who's part Ojibwe, spoke in her tribal tongue and then switched to English as she dedicated her fiction award to "the grace and endurance of native people."

The works of two other winners also centered on young boys - Boo's for nonfiction, and William Alexander's fantasy "Goblin Secrets," for young people's literature. David Ferry won for poetry.

Boo's book, set in a Mumbai slum, is the story of a boy and his harsh and illuminating education in the consequences of crime or perceived crime. The author, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist currently on staff with The New Yorker, said she was grateful for the chance to live in a world she "didn't know" and for the chance to tell the stories of those otherwise ignored. She praised a fellow nominee and fellow Pulitzer-winning reporter, the late Anthony Shadid, for also believing in stories of those without fame or power.

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Last month, Rushdie told an audience at the Cheltenham literature festival that he "really" admired Le Carré as a writer. "I wish we hadn't done it," he said of the 15-year-old feud which played out in the letters pages of the Guardian in 1997.

...Now Le Carré has also extended an olive branch. "I too regret the dispute," he told the Times.

According to the Times, the two began arguing "about the merits of freedom of speech versus the limits of religious tolerance," which began in 1997 when Rushdie penned a letter in the Guardian:

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Two pieces released this fall were written late in life by the science fiction/fantasy master, who died in June at age 91. He contributed "The Book and the Butterfly," an introduction to this year's edition of "The Best American Nonrequired Reading." And he conceived a stark encounter between a young boy and a man he believes is Santa Claus in "Dear Santa," which appears in the holiday issue of Strand Magazine, based in Birmingham, Mich.

The publication of each work was made possible, in part, by deep admiration for the author. Strand managing editor Andrew Gulli, who befriended Bradbury in 2009, has featured several Bradbury works and had an informal agreement with him for "Dear Santa."

"I never heard anything back or received a contract for a couple of months," Gulli wrote in a recent email, adding that final word did not arrive until the day of Bradbury's death. "I was picking up my mail and opened up an envelope to find Ray's signature on the contract."

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Eugenides, who on Tuesday night was to present the award to this year's 10 recipients, is one of many top American authors and playwrights who early in their careers won the honor. It is given to those who exhibit "exceptional talent and promise."

"I remember it was a very rainy night and on my way to the ceremony the back of my trousers became sopping wet," Eugenides, who won in 1993, said during a recent telephone interview. "It was a good way to forestall any moment of grandiosity because I assumed that everyone was looking at my soggy bottoms."

He said he was so excited to win that he has forgotten who handed him his Whiting. But he considers the prize the "first vote of confidence" from someone besides his publisher and values the award's "extreme practical" value and how it made him feel "part of the writerly world."

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I love your column. I love your political commentary even more. Your last piece on Romney was genius. Thanks for making my day.

OK. Here's the question. I'm an INTP. (The N is 26 to 1 Intuition over Sensation.) I'm a professional academic, and pretty successful at it. I have tenure. I've written two books. My introversion doesn't hinder my being a highly effective presenter at conferences. Even if I need to retreat to recharge with my dogs on a regular basis, an academic schedule makes that easy to handle. So what could be the problem, right?

I love to write. But I never have enough time. I've managed to get a novel out on Kindle and two books out with good university presses, but my super-heavy teaching load and service load do not permit me to achieve what I might otherwise achieve. I'd like to work at a research school with a lighter teaching load instead of a teaching school. But I'm not sure anyone would hire me at my age. Moreover, my considerably older husband works where I do and is very happy. He doesn't want to budge. I'm already 55. If I make a move it has to be now, and it may already be too late.

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I'm 25, living in a city I love, working a job I love, and writing. Writing has been my dream more than my passion for most of my life, but I'm good at it and I've finally gotten the discipline to put my butt in the chair every day and bang out a few words. Unfortunately, I'm good at my job, too.

I work in food service in a demi-managerial position (at a recently opened mom-and-pop joint where job titles are a bit of a joke) and am the most reliable and competent person who works there, aside from the owners. It's not hard. I work a schedule I like, I do work I like, I'm not as young as my co-workers and I take what I do seriously. But the owners would love me to do more. What exactly "more" is remains undefined. They've given me multiple raises in the six months since the cafe has opened -- small ones, but a raise is a raise. It's nice to be working somewhere I'm appreciated, making (slightly) more than minimum wage, doing something I love. But.

Writing is what I love, it's what keeps me going. I can't write and manage this cafe. I don't know how to broach this with the owners, who are clearly set on grooming me to take on some of the day-to-day managerial duties from them. Help!

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I recently quit my job as a staff writer for a weekly newspaper. I had applied for the editor’s position, since our current editor was leaving for (much) more lucrative work outside the confines of journalism. I felt qualified for the job and had established an excellent working relationship in the community with many people. I had worked as a staff writer for almost two years at the time and felt confident that I was prepared to take on the editor’s position.

My reason for leaving my position was the fact that the publisher, who was rarely in our office, basically ignored my application for almost a month, then put me into the editor’s position as "fill-in" (his words) and offered me no pay raise, no title and no support. Rather, he denigrated me at every turn. I received approximately 20 minutes of training for the editor’s position. Even though I had worked in the publishing field for almost 15 years, my publisher told me that the "fill-in" position would afford me "valuable experience" -- apparently the 11 years I had been employed in various departments by this company hadn’t given me enough "experience" to get a promotion or a raise (by the way, my rate of pay was, from start to finish, $7.50 per hour).

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Chabon’s “Telegraph Avenue” calls our attention, literally and figuratively, to the other end of the street, where Telegraph crosses the city line and becomes the main drag of the Temescal district, a racially and economically mixed neighborhood in northwest Oakland. That’s where Archy Stallings, a 36-year-old African-American Gulf War vet who is the novel’s central character, and his Jewish partner Nat Jaffe (whose background resembles Chabon’s own) are not so slowly running a vintage vinyl emporium called Brokeland Records into the ground. It’s the summer of 2004, and a wealthy former NFL star and Oakland native, Gibson “G-Bad” Goode, is planning to open an immense new retail-entertainment complex – called, wonderfully, the “Dogpile Thang” – four blocks away, applying the coup de grace to Archy and Nat’s failing business.

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