The recently late Martin Amis had many attributes: lacerating critic, celebrator of Saul Bellow, caustic satirist (London trilogy in particular), polemicist, standard bearer of what the New York Times once sniffily termed “the new unpleasantness,” and by all accounts an excellent drinking partner.

He also provided one of the most cogent definitions of what it means to be a writer:

I think all writers are Martians. They come and say, ‘You haven’t been seeing this place right.’

Look at things like an alien would. Zero in on the things that astound and perplex. Spend your career there.