Who can write? We say that everyone can. Because that is the diplomatic, democratic, politically correct answer. In order not to sound prudishly diplomatic, democratic or politically correct we then say that a certain skill is required. Technically, of course, anyone can be an author – but all you need to do is go into a bookstore to see how much crap is published these days. The literary elite, the good authors, are a select few. They're "unique voices", "original", "mildly scandalous", "thought provoking", "masters of language".

Special. That's what sells. Either the author, or his protagonist, has to have grown up on a rural Chilean pork farm in abject poverty, or have been a hyper-intelligent social misfit in Eton. If the protagonist/author is normal, some circumstance must be abnormal – on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean with a tiger, or, having gone through an emotionally racking yet perfectly standard divorce, discard bourgeois life in favor of a neo-hippy existence in Indonesia with a lover twenty years your senior. Normalcy and routine don't interest, unless descripted in heart-achingly beautiful language, which then makes it exceptional.

In short, if you live in the developed world, are a relatively contented (or discontented yet done nothing interesting about it) middle-class human with a stable personal world, with average intelligence, average beauty, average sense of humor – there's nothing left for you, but to live your average life, happily, if possible. (Seinfeld, famously known as "the TV show about nothing" saves itself from absolute boredom by having sharply etched characters, with debatable senses of humor.)

Conformable, typical, normal, natural, everyday, ordinary, common, average, middling, commonplace, prosaic, conventional, habitual, usual, standard, regular – so many words to describe what we'd love to ignore.