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Quit This, Not That (For Writers)
Writing is hard. So quit. Give up your dream of being a novelist/short story author/screenwriter/memoirist. Delete all those half-finished manuscripts and do something else with all that “free time” that was never really free. Or… You could continue writing and quit other things instead. For example: Quit believing you will never finish writing your novel. Writers who aren’t nearly as smart/talented/dedicated/beautiful/lost/uncertain/crazy as you completed their novels. Of course you can finish yours. Stop being so dramatic. Quit telling yourself you suck as a writer. This is counterproductive. And redundant. All writers suck at some point in their career. Some suck at many points in their career. But stop telling yourself…
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At the End of the Day
At the end of the day, you either wrote something or you didn’t. Maybe it was a banner day, when the stars all aligned and the metaphors all sang and the characters all looked up from the page to offer their thanks for three dimensions instead of two, for flesh and bone and blood and tears, for life itself, even though some of them will be dead by page 243. Especially because of that. Maybe it was a prolific day, a day of ten thousand perfect words, or ten thousand shitty words. A marathon that left you sweaty and exhausted and finger-cramped and grateful and utterly bewildered by your apparent…
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Self-Talk for Writers
Writers are notorious self-talkers. We have to be. All of our employees live in our head. Self-talk is our way of motivating them to do their jobs. But not all our self-talk is helping. Some of it is de-motivating those employees. Yes, it’s true that there are a few uniquely-wired writers who seem to be genuinely motivated by de-motivation. If repeating “I’m a loser!” inspires you to greatness, well…good for you. (And be sure to tip your therapist.) But be careful. Negativity (and also just plain wrongful thinking) leaves a residue that can poison your writing life. The solution seems simple enough: just use self-talk that actually helps and avoid…