The Gift of a Writer Pep Talk

Or: get yourself some writer friends

Photo by Nguyễn Phúc on Unsplash

So. Here’s the thing about being a writer. You’ll feel terrible. Like, a lot. There will be occasional days that you’ll feel kind of okay about yourself, and maybe once in a blue moon something fabulous will happen — you’ll crack open a sentence in your novel, or someone you very much admire will say they think you have what it takes, or you’ll get a nice royalty check — but I’m telling you, those days are rare. Most days, if you’re lucky, you’ll feel kind of just okay — especially in the moments that you’re thinking about writing, and not actually doing it. Some days — maybe more than some — you’ll feel like an unmitigated, abject failure.

I wish it wasn’t this way. [Perhaps you know a writer for whom this is not the case (and perhaps that writer is a cishet white man! in which case, good for him — the world is set up in his favor). I’m talking about most of the writers I’m lucky to call my friends.] One might think that “success” would annihilate this feeling. But, well, nope. If anything, success is so fleeting and so subjective that it can often make the bad days worse. I’m currently on four different text threads with people you’d probably consider Successful Writers — they’ve been paid a lot of money for their books, been lauded by critics, sold many more copies of their books than most of us could…