"Nearly every beginning writer sooner or later asks (or wishes he dared ask) his creative writing teacher, or someone else he thinks might know, whether or not he really has what it takes to be a writer. The honest answer is almost always, 'God only knows.' Occasionally the answer is 'Definitely yes, if you don't get sidetracked,' and now and then the answer is, or should be, 'I don't think so.' No one who's taught writing for very long, or has known many beginning writers, is likely to offer an answer more definite than one of these, though the question becomes easier to answer if the would-be writer means not just 'someone who can get published' but 'a serious novelist,' that is, a dedicated, uncompromising artist, and not just someone who can publish a story now and then—in other words, if the...