Link Day & Hard Writing Lessons

I’ve gotten a late start today so I’m going to have to keep things short. That doesn’t mean I’ll waste your time, though. I have a couple of writing links I thought would be of use.

First, Mary Robinette Kowal has a doubly interesting post. First, it breaks down that whole “why am I not writing” question and then diagnoses it by symptom. It’s dead-on accurate, including solution.

And then she goes on to discuss diagnosing depression. Seeing as how it’s a common problem amongst us artistic types, this, too, bears a close look.

Second, J.H. Moncrieff take a look at the problems behind the simple saying “Writer’s Write.” Well, yeah, if you’re going to be a writer, you have to write. Except sometimes you don’t. Even as enormously prolific a writer as Robert E. Howard didn’t write ALL the time, as much as it seems like he must have, given the tremendous amount of stories he wrote in his short life time. Every now and then he’d stop writing and read or research voraciously, or go off and do other things. He called this “filling the well” because he knew writers didn’t create in a vacuum. The well has to be replenished.

Moncrieff suggests that we need to be kind to ourselves when we’re not meeting our own impossible expectations. Here’s to that.