The Advice I Give to Other Writers is the Advice I Wish I Could Give Myself

Remind me to re-read this in my next spiral, would you?

Writing is by nature a solitary practice, but I wouldn’t have the career I have or the life I cherish without the community of writers I have grown up with. I do mean the other writers I literally grew up with, the Rookie crew (long live) was my ecosystem of socialization as a teenager and young adult, yes, and the New York crew of critics and writers and OG pre-Insta influencers were the people I hung out with instead of going to any high school party, ever. But I also mean the writers I hung out with in my head, the people whose archives I devoured, the authors whose published journals and diaries and compiled letters and collected works I memorized and fell asleep next to. I am an introvert and yet I am rarely ever lonely. I always have 5-15 friends somewhere on a shelf, I joke, but I’m also quite serious. When I’m at any bookstore, I gravitate to the books my friends and acquaintances have written and touch them like talismans. I know that every time I see my name in a book's acknowledgements, I have been given the gift of immortalized love.

Writing is solitary, but being a writer in a world of other writers should be communal, loving work. Citations are an act of thanks and mentorship an act of kinship. It could be, it should be, and I try to make it so when I can do so. So I make time to mentor folks when I can - I was a Periplus mentor for two years/cycles and still speak at colleges when they ask but I cherish one-on-ones with other writers. We have to look out for each other!

I had a phone call with a writer the other afternoon and I wanted to share the advice I gave them here, with you, but also for myself to remember later on - because there will (always) be times when the self-doubt crawls back, the self-sabotage begins again, the isolation is a little too long, the fear a little faster to arrive than the rewards or the direct deposits. These lessons were learned before, during, and after the hardest times in my life as a writer and as a human: