Friday Feast: Down in the Dumps Edition

mindy-kaling-donutMy fellow editors must have been in the dumps this week because I received a slew of links related to writer confidence, depression, and questions of what constitutes a “real writer.” Or maybe the good people of the interwebs are down in the dumps, and they’re alerting me to a trend. Those big writer conference acceptances and rejections typically come in May. So maybe they’re on to something.

Regardless, I hope you’ll relax, eat your feelings if you must, and take comfort in the mostly NSFW wisdom of your fellow writers.

  • Let’s start with the words that launched a thousand coffee mug shipments: Write like a motherfucker.
  • “…writing is, itself, not a difficult task. Like I said: tippy-tappy typey-typey and ta-da, you wrote something. But the problem lies in the hurricane winds of bewilderment that roar and whirl around that central act. What’s good writing? What are the rules? What is your voice? What’s everyone else doing? Will you get published? Agent? Editor? Self-published? What’s good storytelling? What the hell is a genre and why does it matter?” Guess what? None of us know what the fuck we’re doing! Hooray!
  • What makes a real writer? Damned if we know, but this post (and The Veleteen Rabbit) tries to make sense of it.
  • What the hell, just break all the rules!
  • None of this helps? You’ve eaten a dozen donuts? Oh, honey. It’s time for some writer calisthenics.

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