Daily writing up another blog post, a novel, or a script can be an odd way – an oddly awkward way – to spend your life.

And in my limited experience, this passage below is spot on. The writing life completely puts you out of rhythm with the rest of the world. This is probably yet another reason writers surround themselves with writers. 

I think the resilience sometimes required can nearly be an act of faith, something that can, at times, become a physical obstacle that only the predestined can muster.

Writing is not always pretty, if you want to know the truth.

You can get up and go for a walk if you need to.

We have chosen to spend the better part of our lives in solitude, wrestling with our deepest thoughts and obsessions and concerns. We unleash the beast of memory; we peer into Pandora’s box. We do all this in the spirit of faith and exploration, with no guarantee that what we produce will be worthwhile. We don’t call in sick. We don’t take mental health days. We don’t get two weeks paid vacation, or summer Fridays, or holiday weekends. Often, we are out of step with the tempo of those around us. It can feel isolating and weird. And so, when the day turns against us, we might do well to follow the advice of the Buddhist writer Sylvia Boorstein, who talks to herself as if she’s a child she loves very much. Sweetheart, she’ll say. Darling. Honey. That’s all right. There, there. Go take a walk. Take a bath. Take a drive. Bake a cake. Nap a little. You’ll try again tomorrow.

-Dani Shapiro, Still Writing

So you went to a writing workshop and now you think you know everything.

You know what to do and what to avoid.

The proper way to communicate by the written word…

Well, I call hogwash.

You can write whatever you want to.

I’ll use a cheerfully written adverb if I feel like it.

And I will start a sentence with a conjunction on a whim.

The problem is that writing is art – and the quality of art is subjective.

But what do I know.

Shapiro is, however, a pro at writing workshops.

Sit around a scarred wooden table in a writing workshop for enough hours and you’ll hear write what you know, along with show don’t tell, never use adverbs, and other guidelines. And know that every rule you’ll hear in a writing workshop is meant to be broken. You can do absolutely anything—tell, not show, make excellent use of an adverb—as long as you can pull it off. Get out there on the high wire, unafraid to fall. Who says you can’t use ellipses or an exclamation point? Who says dialogue has to be indented and in quotation marks? Who says you can’t write a whole novel from the point of view of a child trapped in a room?

-Dani Shapiro, Still Writing