During random social occasions it’s always with a pinch of pride and much more self-pity that I gulp down when I am introduced to new acquaintances as a “writer”. In fact, once my friends drop the “W word”, the person who until a moment ago was thinking “who’s this long-haired nerd standing in the way...

Since the glory days of Ernst Hemingway and Gertrude Stein in Paris, there's been a certain glamor about being a writer while living abroad. CNNgo had an article about the expat writer scene in Bangkok . The piece quickly bursts the bubble of starry-eyed dreamers. The writers interviewed were frank about the state of the...