Is it possible to be in a situation in which prioritizing your novel (or writing) is actually a bad move? Or should you always live by the saying "a writer writes"?

Of course prioritising your novel can be a bad move. Prioritising anything can be a bad move if it distracts you from what is most important in your life, such as caring for your loved ones, to name but one example.

My professional writing career (and by that I mean being published and earning money) started only three years ago. I was 70 at the time.

That’s not to say that I started writing three years ago; I’ve been writing for most of my life. I wrote my first novel 50 years ago and followed it up with two others (all but one of them are unpublished). That’s not exactly prolific but I had to support myself and later my family so writing was a low priority. I have no regrets about that. It was the right thing to do at the time.

Are people born to be writers? I think that certain people are born to be artists, and writing is a form of art, so you might make an argument for that. But it’s still a long way from people who regard writing as a money-making exercise.

Writing for money is a very risky venture. If you are famous in some other field, you will probably be able to sell your books quite successfully, even if they are not entirely written by you. If you are not already famous, you can join the endless queue of wannabes. You will have to prove your worth and you will also have to be extremely lucky. How lucky do you feel?