with the news of NaNoWriMo shutting down for good, I want to make sure to preserve Lemony Snicket's 2010 pep talk. every time I feel down about my writing, for the last 15 years, I've returned to this talk as a reminder of why I write. it's easy, especially now, to wonder why we bother doing what we do. here's a reminder for us all.

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Dear Cohort,

Struggling with your novel? Paralyzed by the fear that it’s nowhere near good enough? Feeling caught in a trap of your own devising? You should probably give up.

For one thing, writing is a dying form. One reads of this every day. Every magazine and newspaper, every hardcover and paperback, every website and most walls near the freeway trumpet the news that nobody reads anymore, and everyone has read these statements and felt their powerful effects. The authors of all those articles and editorials, all those manifestos and essays, all those exclamations and eulogies—what would they say if they knew you were writing something? They would urge you, in bold-faced print, to stop.

Clearly, the future is moving us proudly and zippily away from the written word, so writing a novel is actually interfering with the natural progress of modern society. It is old-fashioned and fuddy-duddy, a relic of a time when people took artistic expression seriously and found solace in a good story told well. We are in the process of disentangling ourselves from that kind of peace of mind, so it is rude for you to hinder the world by insisting on adhering to the beloved paradigms of the past. It is like sitting in a gondola, listening to the water carry you across the water, while everyone else is zooming over you in jetpacks, belching smoke into the sky. Stop it, is what the jet-packers would say to you. Stop it this instant, you in that beautiful craft of intricately-carved wood that is giving you such a pleasant journey.

Besides, there are already plenty of novels. There is no need for a new one. One could devote one’s entire life to reading the work of Henry James, for instance, and never touch another novel by any other author, and never be hungry for anything else, the way one could live on nothing but multivitamin tablets and pureed root vegetables and never find oneself craving wild mushroom soup or linguini with clam sauce or a plain roasted chicken with lemon-zested dandelion greens or strong black coffee or a perfectly ripe peach or chips and salsa or caramel ice cream on top of poppyseed cake or smoked salmon with capers or aged goat cheese or a gin gimlet or some other startling item sprung from the imagination of some unknown cook. In fact, think of the world of literature as an enormous meal, and your novel as some small piddling ingredient – the drawn butter, for example, served next to a large, boiled lobster. Who wants that? If it were brought to the table, surely most people would ask that it be removed post-haste.

Even if you insisted on finishing your novel, what for? Novels sit unpublished, or published but unsold, or sold but unread, or read but unreread, lonely on shelves and in drawers and under the legs of wobbly tables. They are like seashells on the beach. Not enough people marvel over them. They pick them up and put them down. Even your friends and associates will never appreciate your novel the way you want them to. In fact, there are likely just a handful of readers out in the world who are perfect for your book, who will take it to heart and feel its mighty ripples throughout their lives, and you will likely never meet them, at least under the proper circumstances. So who cares? Think of that secret favorite book of yours – not the one you tell people you like best, but that book so good that you refuse to share it with people because they’d never understand it. Perhaps it’s not even a whole book, just a tiny portion that you’ll never forget as long as you live. Nobody knows you feel this way about that tiny portion of literature, so what does it matter? The author of that small bright thing, that treasured whisper deep in your heart, never should have bothered.

Of course, it may well be that you are writing not for some perfect reader someplace, but for yourself, and that is the biggest folly of them all, because it will not work. You will not be happy all of the time. Unlike most things that most people make, your novel will not be perfect. It may well be considerably less than one-fourth perfect, and this will frustrate you and sadden you. This is why you should stop. Most people are not writing novels which is why there is so little frustration and sadness in the world, particularly as we zoom on past the novel in our smoky jet packs soon to be equipped with pureed food. The next time you find yourself in a group of people, stop and think to yourself, probably no one here is writing a novel. This is why everyone is so content, here at this bus stop or in line at the supermarket or standing around this baggage carousel or sitting around in this doctor’s waiting room or in seventh grade or in Johannesburg. Give up your novel, and join the crowd. Think of all the things you could do with your time instead of participating in a noble and storied art form. There are things in your cupboards that likely need to be moved around.

In short, quit. Writing a novel is a tiny candle in a dark, swirling world. It brings light and warmth and hope to the lucky few who, against insufferable odds and despite a juggernaut of irritations, find themselves in the right place to hold it. Blow it out, so our eyes will not be drawn to its power. Extinguish it so we can get some sleep. I plan to quit writing novels myself, sometime in the next hundred years.

Lemony Snicket

“Unlike most things that most people make, your novel will not be perfect”

^^ no one does comforting irony better than Lemony Snicket <3

idk if I derailed the list of Black women writers that wasn't supposed to be a rec list, but it just feels so counterintuitive to talk books and not rec them.

so I'll add here, separately:

If you're wondering "where did the difficult miracle of Black women's literature in America come from?"*, well, there are answers neatly curated and printed!:

The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers anthology is currently only $6 as an ebook.

I also went through that anthology once and made a list of all of the books/autobiographies/narratives it includes, and they're mostly free through GutenbergProject and Archive.org:

The History of Mary Prince Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince A Plea for Emigration Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl The Bondwoman's Narrative A Hairdresser's Experience in the High Life Our Nig The Octoroon Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave Narrative of Sojourner Truth From the Darkness Cometh Light Iona Leroy: Or, Shadows Uplifted

does anyone write in public? and if so how do you get over the paranoia that everyone is looking over your shoulder and reading your writing and going 'wow that's so cringe and badly written. can you imagine having the audacity to write something so bad and embarrassing in public? this person should probably die.'

I think kafka’s diaries are the strongest evidence that journaling is not necessarily good for your mental health

it's because he didn't use washi tape

Last written line tag

@dreamywritingdragon tagged me on my main so here goes!

"I understand," he said instead. He was too weary to fight him. It was so hard to stand his ground. To stand at all.

But Lith was too smart to believe him, and too stupid to pretend he did.

Tagging @neirawrites, @scribble-dee-vee and @siarven

Ooo, loving that turn of phrase in the second sentence :3

St. Augustine of Hippo

happy tdov to people who don't pass or have no interest in passing, who can't pass because there is no culturally recognised category for the way they want to be recognised, who flip flop and fuck around, who can't hide their transness and have to plan their everyday around being visible, who can't signal their transness and have to come out over and over because the default presumption is intolerable, who don't have the resources yet or the knowhow or the willpower to change what they want to change, whose transness is warped by a hegemonic image of ideal transness that is almost as difficult to escape as the hegemonic image of cisness, who don't have a justification prepared for the assertion that they are trans but can no longer justify the assertion that they are not, who have a million justifications that are all surplus to the fundamental requirement (that society mandated one articulation of you and you chose another), et cetera and so forth across the world and universe forever. your version is right. don't concede.

My train was late. AGAIN.

Hi everyone it's trans day of visibility!! If ya feel like it, I'd love if you shared my work.. My name is Rachamim and I make personal queer fantasy work inspired by my Greek Sephardi background.

It's what always kept me going through my hardest periods of illness and instability and I feel very lucky to still be here sharing with y'all. If ya want links of where/how else you can support my work they're all here!! Thank you!

I heart prey animal rage I love when characters are fucking insane with terror

When they're not dangerous like a hunter but dangerous like a spooked horse kicking your skull in

Let's hear it for prey animal rage let's hear it for killing everyone else in the world before you'll let them catch you

I AM READING I AM WATCHING FILMS I AM CREATING ART IN 2025

reporting to you from inside a raspberry

via pauloctavious on instagram

i remember learning the word melancholy at age 7 or something and thinking oh this word's gonna be huge for me

dating simulator where it starts normal but it slowly becomes clear that all of the romanceable characters are attempting to cover up an extremely specific murder they committed a year ago before you arrived