ON WRITING
Seven Essential Survival Skills in the Writer’s Tool Box
Because that’s all J.K. Rowling needs
It’s often said the difference between writers and those who just say they’re writers is that writers write.
True enough. But the differences don’t stop there.
Writers who write also have honed seven other critical skills distinguishing them from the pretenders.
Master these and you’ll be on your way to becoming the writer that even in your wildest fantasies you never dreamed you could be.
Independence
Financial security? Social life? Flattering wardrobe?
No thank you, says the writer.
Instead, the writer opts for poverty, isolation and self-loathing, the craft’s lifeblood.
Most well-adjusted non-creatives can’t understand that. They’re sadly deluded, believing that a person can be a healthy and productive member of society and still create meaningful art.
Fortunately, your friends and peers will tire of trying to convert you to their hedonistic ways as they marry, buy homes and start families, after which they’ll passive aggressively abandon you to your private chaos.
There you will find more time and material for writing!
Starvation
You can’t eat words.
But starving is still better than taking soul crushing ‘content’ jobs and underpaying gigs just to put food on the table.
Besides, you can always eat your never-ending supply of rejection letters. Eventually the stress will prompt your gastric juices to consume your digestive tract anyway.
On the downside, malnutrition fogs the brain making it difficult to write about anything other than food. But the market for food writing is white hot right now.
As long as you have Instragramable photos.
Masturbation
Use this tool as frequently as possible. Many writers even masturbate instead of writing, taking time out only for meals.
Of course, you’d rather have real sex with a real partner. But writers typically don’t have two nickels to rub together to attract a mate.
Plus, writers spend most of their time alone, so their social skills and personal hygiene are so corroded they are at risk of drowning in the dating pool.
Procrastination
See Masturbation, above.
Panic
At some point in your writing ‘career,’ as often as several times a day, you’ll be seized by panic. It typically goes like this:
Oh my God! What have I done with my life? Mom and dad were right. Pursuing my dreams was a foolish and youthful indulgence. I should have had something to fall back on. Now what have I got to show for it all? I’m broke, starving and single. I have no marketable skills, no prospects, and I reek of musk. I’m a total loser. Fuck you, J. K. Rowling!
During these episodes it’s advisable to stay calm, take a deep breath, and masturbate until your knuckles ache.
You’ll feel better after that. Except for the shame, but you’ll be used to that by then.
Mooching
Writing is as much about manipulating your personal relationships as it is about manipulating your readers.
It’s imperative to manage the friends, relatives, friends of friends and high school acquaintances who will be providing your food, shelter, transportation, internet access and other daily needs without alienating them. It’s a delicate parasite/host balance.
Invariably, even your staunchest supporters will find the tough love in their hearts to cast you to your fate. But by then you will have learned their daily routines, made a duplicate key to their home and swiped their streaming codes so you can continue to binge, masturbate and shower while they’re at work.
Settling
So your silly childhood fantasies of a meaningful career, home and family curdled into a bilious ooze of envy, rage and despair.
You’re 46, still driving a rusted-out compact hatchback, living with roommates and sleeping on a futon.
Whatever pride, dignity or reputation you ever hoped to achieve are just dim shadows in the scorched earth.
Let it go. Surrender. Lower your standards.
In the end, life is just a pathetic catastrophe, anyway. You might as well just embrace the hilarity of it and own being the butt of your own joke. There’s no use fighting it. Maybe even write about it. Then forgive yourself.
And J. K. Rowling.
After all, your miserable life’s not her fault.
It’s yours, for choosing to be a writer.
She’s just lucky.
