Let me tell you a story. One time, several years ago now, I was invited out to some cocktail thing for a writer who had a new literary novel out. I never go to things like this (you'll soon see why), but a friend was going to be there and I heard there would be snacks...

The writer was a white guy, late 20s. I think he had been in finance. He wrote a novel about rich people doing something (???). For this, he was given an eye-watering advance, something near to a million dollars? And lots of press. Anyway, so I show up and start eating snacks...

The guy is holding court, and I am listening through all the cheese I am shoving into my face. He tells me and the group that he got all this money and did "what a real writer does" with it--he blew it all on a house rental and got drunk every day in the pool and never wrote.

This was bad news, so I started eating cheese even more quickly. He kept telling this story, about how this is what "real writers do" and I finally said, "No, that's what assholes do."

Some guys, when confronted like this, like to accuse me of being "sassy". He did this (all the while telling me I looked like Selma Hayek, which I do not--I look like Audrey Plaza's waterlogged older cousin). To my credit, I did not murder him.

Anyway, once I had shoved all the cheese into my cheek-pockets, I left, remembering that this is why I never go anywhere except my friends' houses. That guy got a ton of press, no one bought the book, the publisher took a bath on the whole thing, and I don't think he wrote again.

There are a lot of stories like this. It's pretty common. The takeaways are:
1. Dudes.
2. Eat all the cheese.
3. Writers write. Assholes lecture you on how to write when they have no experience.
4. Don't worry about what's going on with other people and their books.