"My friend, after six thousand pinks, it's time you tried painting or computer programming."
Interesting to note, he feels a bad writer should become a Hacker or Painter. Paul Graham, surely, would think otherwise? (i.e a good hacker or painter probably makes for a good writer?, so maybe they should try something else - like basketball).
The writing King is talking about is commercial fiction. You can certainly be a good programmer, a good artist, or even a good writer of other stuff and still be hopeless at writing commercial fiction.
I'd generally agree, I was a good reviewer but I'm still having a devil of a time getting a novel written that I'm proud of.
I'm thankful that every query I've sent out, especially for short stories, have come back with constructive criticism explaining why they didn't accept it. This is far better than friends I knew who had simply received constant standard rejections. So I want to take my time and make sure when I'm going for a sale, I want to be selling something I'm truly proud of... I'm sure I wont care after the first advance so it's probably best I do it now when the money isn't important than when the money is important.
Interesting to note, he feels a bad writer should become a Hacker or Painter. Paul Graham, surely, would think otherwise? (i.e a good hacker or painter probably makes for a good writer?, so maybe they should try something else - like basketball).