How to Deal with Other People

as a writer

No offense, but other people are energy vampires who will suck you dry if you let them. Here’s an incomplete list on how to stop others:

• When you’re writing, tell other people you’re “working.” To other people, “work” is real but “writing” isn’t. 

• In your planner (buy/use a planner) or shared calendar, label writing time as “meeting” or “appointment” or “busy.” 

  • No need to tell anyone “the truth,” which is you’re meeting with yourself or you have an appointment to write or you’ll be busy writing. 

  • Other people respect meetings, appointments, and being busy, but they don’t respect “writing,” and they’ll talk you out of doing it. 

• Tell your own self that “reading” is “writing,” because it is. 

  • Fact: A lot of writing is not writing. It’s reading. It’s watching TV. It’s deleting everything you wrote. It’s napping. It’s being so bored, oh my god. It’s being stuck and frustrated and uncertain and insecure–and it’s feeling like that for months until there’s one (1) good day when you know you’re a genius who will leave readers staring into space, gobsmacked.

• Prioritize “writing.” Elevate writing. Convince yourself that writing is a worthwhile way to spend your time/day/life on earth. Don’t try to convince anyone else because you won’t.

• Declare email bankruptcy.

• Other people exist to take up your time as if your time were their time. 

  • No. 

  • Reclaim your time. 

  • Only you can do it.  

• Memorize this inspiring quotation, from poet Jane Kenyon: “Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.”

Once more with feeling: Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Put yourself in the way of beauty. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Throw away the phone. Masturbate regular hours.

How do you ignore other people?

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To learn more ways to feed your inner life, click for my upcoming classes:

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How to Write a Tragicomic Memoir

• August 30th (Wednesday)

• 5:30-8:30pm MDT

• Online, via Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Learn to make readers laugh while RIPPING OUT THEIR HEARTS in a full-length sad, funny book about yourself.

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Funny Personal Essays: A 4-Week Writing Workshop

• September 7, 14, 21, 28 (Thursdays)

• 6:30-9pm EST

• Online, via 92NY

Do David Sedaris cosplay.

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ICYMI: I’m Elissa Bassist, and I teach short conceptual humor/satire writing, funny personal essays, tragicomic memoir, emotional emails, and that’s it. I teach in person and online at The New School, 92NY, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Writing Workshops, Pandemic University, and elsewhere. I edit the “Funny Women” column on The Rumpus, and I wrote the award-deserving book Hysterical. I am probably my therapist’s favorite.

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