The typewriter keys stick in the heat. Ernest Hemingway writes his forty-seventh ending to A Farewell to Arms, each attempt a small murder of possibility. Frank Herbert feeds everything—genius and garbage, inspiration and desperation—into the furnace of creation.

"When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion."

— J.D. Salinger

Writing: Profession or Religion? enters the contested territory where artistic devotion encounters marketplace brutality. Cristian Mihai's essays excavate the psychological archaeology of creative work, revealing how writers navigate the impossible mathematics of artistic choice.

These are not gentle meditations on craft, but surgical examinations of creative consciousness. From medieval cathedral builders who understood that sacred and practical were never opposites, to contemporary writers wrestling with market demands while listening for the muse's whisper, this collection maps the true geography of creative life.

For writers who have felt the familiar war between art and commerce, passion and pragmatism, Mihai offers something more essential than answers: the intellectual courage to hold contradictions without resolution.