The reason that other writers are terrible at commiserating with their colleagues over their failures.

When I was a sophomore in college, my roommate, Matt, once reproached me for the terrible job I was doing consoling him for something (a bad grade on a test? I don't know). After he told me about the grade, I started giving him advice on how to study better, and he said something like, "Rahul, this is an example of the difference in the way that the gen…