Do you care for a writer? Top five ways to show your love

By Amy Lou Jenkins

Thank you for loving a writer. Although writers are individuals, our idiosyncratic tendencies are fairy universal. Even when we wave awards and acceptance letters, even when we pronounce those who have rejected us as unenlightened and unworthy, every public act-- every reading, every blog post, and every submission-- requires an arduous swim through self-induced waves of diffidence. We are not easy to love or to live with or know. We are cranky; we crave isolation and socialization. We ignore you. We don’t understand ourselves. While you can’t change the publishing industry and usher your writer friends and lovers to literary superstardom, you can avoid rubbing our multiple weeping wounds inflicted by rejection, nonreaders, and poor remuneration for the words we have hauled letter by letter from the depths of a well that changes location every time we head out with our empty pail. Help a writer out and show your love with these five suggestions:

 1. When we say we don’t want to be interrupted, please understand it may take us hours to get a writing flow going and seconds to lose it. When you interrupt for unessential reason, it feels disrespectful and hurts our work.

 2. If you read our raw work, don’t be a mean editor with a red pen. We can handle and appreciate intelligent criticism.  Criticize if you will, just don't ignore us.

 3. It’s very kind of you to tell us how much you enjoyed our book, but it doesn’t help us. If you do believe in the merit of our book, post those compliments on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and like bookseller sites. Perhaps there is a case for spouses having a conflict of interest re this kind of posting, but surely friend/fans can find honest words to post. Tell your friends if you enjoy the work. 

5. We don’t care if you come to our funerals, it's more important to come to our book signings and readings.