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his life to music. But if his talent was not equal to his calling, he wanted to know ahead of time so he could avoid wasting his life. He played, and the great violinist shook his head. You lack the fire, he said.

Decades later the two met again, and the would-be violinist, now a prosperous businessman, recalled their previous meeting. You changed my entire life, he explained. It was a bitter disappointment, giving up music, but I forced myself to accept your judgment. Thus, instead of becoming a fourth-rate musician, I've had a good life in the world of commerce. But tell me, how could you tell so readily that I lacked the fire?

Oh, I hardly listened when you played, the old master said. That's what I tell everyone who plays for me?that they lack the fire.

But that's unforgivable! the businessman cried. How could you do that? You altered the entire course of my life. Perhaps I could have been another Kreisler, another Heifetz?

The old man shook his head again. You don't understand, he said. If you had had the fire, you would have paid no attention to me.

Perhaps my student had the fire. I've had no contact with her since that seminar, so I can't say whether or not she has continued to write, or if she's had any success with it. But it wouldn't surprise me to learn that she's given up. Not everyone has the will. Not everyone cares that much about writing stories and getting them published.

Will is every bit as important for those of us who have a taste of success. Several years ago a woman of my acquaintance decided to try her hand at writing. She showed me a couple of chapters of an erotic novel she'd written and I was immediately impressed by her ability. She was a natural stylist, readily able to assume the general style of any literary genre. While she tended to minimize this talent, insisting it was simple mimicry, that's what stylistic ability generally consists of at the outset of one's career.

She abandoned the erotic novel, finding it an uncomfortable genre, and took the time to read half a dozen gothics. Then, in rather rapid succession, she wrote and sold two gothics. After that she wrote a hundred or so pages of an unsuccessful mystery novel, and after that she didn't write a thing.

She had the talent, and she had enough success to make it clear that a career as a free-lance writer was available to her. She had, too, enough drive and self-discipline to produce those two books and get them published. But, ultimately, being a writer was just not that important to her. She had drifted into it largely as a result of association with other writers, and she drifted out of it when it proved insufficiently rewarding.

I suspect my friend has something in common with the phenomenon of one-book authors. The common wisdom holds that such writers have only one book in them, that having gotten it out of their systems they have nothing further to say. I think it might be more accurate to say that they have a very strong desire to write a particular book but no real desire to become a writer per se. Having written that book, they have slaked their hunger.

Fair enough. Some people climb one mountain and complete one marathon and let it go at that. Others define themselves as mountain climbers or marathoners and go on climbing or running as long as they have breath in their bodies.

And some of us go on writing.

I have a feeling that the tendency to perceive onself as a writer is a somewhat different matter from simple will. I think, too, that it plays a big part in determining who makes it as a writer and who does not. In my own case, I decided (or recognized; it may have been more a matter of recognition than decision) that I was going to be a writer when I was in the eleventh grade. A teacher's offhand remark put the idea in my head, but once planted it grew like a weed. I had no idea how I would go about becoming a writer or what I would write about, but I somehow knew it was what I was going to do.

I am quite certain that this self-definition had a lot to do with the development of my career. I submitted my earliest efforts to magazines, and while they came back like bad pennies, and with better cause, I took this in stride. The day came when an editor suggested a rewrite, and then another day came when he bought the story.

That was not the end of rejection and disappointment. Sometimes it seems more like the beginning, and the end is not yet in sight. But throughout it all I have never been able to shake that perception of myself as a writer. It has kept me chained to this bloody desk for more years than I care to number, and it has made it impossible for me seriously to entertain the idea of doing anything else for very long.

That recognition of self as a writer can happen at any age. Consider another friend of mine, who awoke eight or nine years ago to the idea of becoming a writer. He was at the time editing a scientific trade journal for little money and less glory, and he had lately become