My Best Writing Advice post generated some good responses this week, so here's another gold nugget mined from my Five Easy Questions series. Feel free to chip in with your tips below, I'll print the best ones in a future Greatest Hits Post...
This wisdom from Tom Kealey, the writer behind the fantastic resource, The Creative Writing MFA Handbook. Here, he explains how we can stay sane in this frustrating profession:
"Staying sane? I think a key aspect of this is your own identity as a writer. Michael Collier talks about this in The MFA Handbook:
'If you write software during the day, you have to think of yourself as a writer of poetry or fiction or nonfiction, not just at night, but all the time. Keep involved in your community of writers. Keep in contact with your classmates. Keep writing. This sense you have of yourself as a writer should override everything else. If you can’t convince yourself that you’re a writer, then you’re not going to get the work done.'
"You have to look at yourself as a writer who happens to work as a high school biology teacher, and not as a high school biology teacher who happens to write. The distinction is very important. A lot of factors in our world work against being a writer, especially financial considerations. You have to hold on to your own identity and protect it."
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