An expletive-infused adrenaline shot of writerly can-do from Chuck Wendig

I'm taking a quick break from my paid writing to share this with you:

Life’s getting in the way? I’m sorry, that’s how life works. Life is a series of obstructions — it’s speedbumps all the way down. You’re depressed? Get in line. You’re depressed. So’s that woman over there and she wrote 1000 words today, and yesterday, and the day before. You think I don’t deal with depression? Of course I do. We writers are tailor-made for that. I know, I sound unsympathetic — trust me, it’s the opposite. I’m completely sympathetic. I’ve been there. I’m sometimes there still. It doesn’t change the cold, hard fact that all the power lies with you. In your brain. In your hands. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. Did you want it to be easy? What fun is easy? Easy is a value of zero. And surely you want more than nothing? Writing makes you pay. In blood and tears and frustration. You do it because you love it. Not because it’s a warm bed at your back but because it’s sharp stones under your feet spurring you forward.

[...]

Fuck it. Shut up! Write. You get your years and you get no more. These are your days. No Muse is going to breathe a hot sigh of inspiration up your hiney-hole. I’m not going to come to your house and crawl inside your skin and bind my bones to yours with the purpose of forcing you to crap out all your big bad story-words. Oh, you have writer’s block? Boo-hoo! Writer’s Block has as much power as you give it — it’s a Weeping Angel, so bind it to the earth with your gaze.

This is creation!

If you liked this, definitely read the whole thing here! I found it both funny and inspiring. PERHAPS YOU WILL TOO.

Week Nine, Monday

Cheery, huh?

Look, most neophype scribes go through a "suicide = profound" phase. It doesn't mean every writer is depressed. We're just inward-looking people who have to work out some stuff, clear our collective throats if you will, before we can start working on things that are not, well, this.

And anyway, the subject matter doesn't necessarily make a story clichéd. It's what you do with it. So there.

The completed story can be found here!

Week Eight: You are a person of little worth if you are casual with your non-verbal moments

Geez. Judgy much...?

Evidently I wrote this on December 1st, 2000—a week or two from the end of my first semester at Emerson College. It had been a rough semester, personally and interpersonally. I felt angry about some things, guilty about others. I don't remember why specifically I wrote this or what I was thinking at the time, but I do remember that I was feeling low.

Perhaps I felt that I had been casual with my non-verbal moments, and this was why I was having such a hard time of it? We may never know. Those AOL Instant Messenger chat logs are lost to time, buried in hard drives several dead computers ago.

What I do know is that this was meant as a prescription for me. In this sentiment, somewhere, was the way by which I could get back to feeling good about the future and my place in it.

So that's a starting place. Kinda. Hmm. This one will be tricky...