Author Hannah Moskovitz has a sweet little post on coping with the ins and outs of a daily writing life:
Here’s what I’ve found keeps you from getting gnawed down to nothing with the jealousy, fear, and guilt that seems to go hand in hand with writing.
Tell someone who isn’t a writer.
When I was querying in high school, I had a few people ask me why the fuck I kept running to the computers like an addict between every class. So I explained querying to them, with a flow-chart. All paths lead to rejection–query, partial, full–except this one skinny path over here that leads to acceptance.
One kid said, “So any step of the way, someone can just hit the YOU SUCK button on you?”
Yeah.
So after that, we called it the “YOU SUCK” button. Every once in a while he’d asked me if anyone had hit the “YOU SUCK” button on me lately.
Usually they had, and he’d grumble and say “Those bastards! They must be crazy to reject you! You’re amazing!”
Keep in mind, this kid had never read a thing that I’d written. For all he knew, I could have been horrible. But just the fact that I was out there writing and sending letters made me fantastic to him.
