No matter what borough you live in, how much you pay in rent or who your neighbors are, being a writer still sucks. Nouns and verbs are hard to come up with. Even Brooklyn, with all its just-as-good-as-Manhattan verve, can't change that for you. If anything, as Colson Whitehead, author of the revered Apex Hides the Hurt, reports in the Sunday Book Review, it's harder. All the shrinks are still in Manhattan and reading friends' unpublished books is boring. And even a dip in the Gowanus Canal can't cure writers block. Of course, Brooklyn writers hating the Brooklyn writers' scene is a trend as old as metrosexuals.