I\u2019ve been a lucky writer. I\u2019ve enjoyed a large amount of support from friends and family. In fact, I have never known anyone who was not supportive of my writing.\u00a0 Even family and acquaintances who don\u2019t read my particular style, or don\u2019t understand or appreciate some of the things I have written are supportive of my life as a writer.<\/p>\n
It is an interesting thing. Maybe there are critical people out there, and I\u2019m just not aware of them. But there is a fine line when it comes to a writer\u2019s confidence. Support is great. We need it. We especially need support of our writing time. Anyone can be supportive when it doesn\u2019t affect them. But writing is a solitary business, and it is a lot harder to be supportive when it is affecting your time with a loved one.<\/p>\n
However, in my experience, people can be too supportive. That sounds odd, maybe even impossible, but there is a definite fine line. Writers are psychologically fragile. At some point, support, though well-meaning, can place a lot of pressure upon the writer.<\/p>\n
My ex-wife used to encourage me to write a best-seller so that we could get a big house. She meant well. It was her way of being supportive, but in fact, that sort of support can be damaging. A writer can take that a couple of different ways. First, you can put a whole lot of pressure upon yourself, making rejections unreasonably painful. Second, it can make the writer feel like you don\u2019t really understand what they are going through.<\/p>\n
Obviously, we would all like to write best-sellers. We would love to have mansions paid for by the page. But there are maybe a dozen writers in the world who make that sort of living off their writing. There are over a dozen writers just in my writers group. You can do the math. You would be better off playing the lottery.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard for a writer to get someone to understand that the most they can really hope for is to make a living off writing, even a meager one. It\u2019s hard for people who see books selling at grocery stores for 12.99 to understand that for a majority of us, the most we can hope for is to see our names on a book that will probably never make much money.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why it is important for writers to socialize with other writers. That\u2019s how this whole thing started. A majority of the people who write for this website were in a writers group together through National Novel Writing Month. We hang out together a couple times a month. We write together. We understand this weird profession and what each member goes through for it.<\/p>\n
Some of us, such as myself and a couple of other writers here, have extremely supportive writers as significant others. That is a double whammy, a supportive family member who also understands the toils of being a writer. It worked for Stephen and Tabitha King. Tabitha has always been Stephen’s number one “constant reader.”<\/p>\n
Writers need each other, but we need our friends and family, as well. We need significant others and children who will give us time to pursue this seemingly-futile dream. We need them to prop up our confidence when we lack it, and slap down our egos when they get too big. The true irony about writing, a passion that only you can do, is that you need other people to be successful.<\/p>\n
In short, your writer needs you. Thank you for being there for him\/her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve been a lucky writer. I\u2019ve enjoyed a large amount of support from friends and family. In fact, I have never known anyone who was not supportive of my writing.\u00a0 Even family and acquaintances who don\u2019t read my particular style, or don\u2019t understand or appreciate some of the things I have written are supportive of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[383,442,1095,1275],"class_list":["post-5447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writers-life","tag-family","tag-friends","tag-support","tag-writers-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}