Most of the readers on this site--myself included--live in that treacherous region called The Land Before Your First Book. We all dream of finishing novels, screenplays or non-fiction books, struggling without the reassurance of a steady writing paycheck.
Today Tao Lin wrote a sort of kindness manifesto about what motivated him during that rough time in his life: "many writers probably continue writing (or are able to produce new stories and eventually books) only because every couple of weeks or months they read some little thing on the internet, some evidence that their writing has had an actual effect on a human being that they do not know."
Ed Champion responded with an equally important observation about the unfriendly state of media culture: "the world is often a casually inconsiderate place, particularly here in New York, where I am still negotiating the way in which people — even supposed acquaintances — snub each other when more “important” people are present."
What's the point? We've only got each other people, so support your fellow fledgling writer and drop somebody a friendly line on their blog. You could be the person who saves some wonderful novel or movie or poem from the trash bin.
I would even take that a step further and urge you to actively seek out writing friends, to prevent yourself from falling into the Depression Tar Pits that fill the Land Before Your First Book. LWOT (Lies with Occasional Truth) has a program to help you find your writing buddy have a nifty feature called Write Match--a way to be artificially hooked up with your writerly soul-mate.
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