Guest Post: How to Stay Sane While Writing By I.L. Cruz

Writing is a funny profession. I spend most of my time with different voices in my head or trying to understand intangibles like motivation, arcs, and dimensions. I don’t always understand it and the only rule that is absolute is “don’t be boring”. Those are the bullet points everyone talks about and I was prepared for.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how lonely writing can be. I spend a lot of time in my head, on a page or at a screen. When I have a real breakthrough after tackling a particularly sticky plot point, it’s a quiet victory. When I discover, to my horror, that the character I thought was integral to my story isn’t and have to slash pages and pages of hard work, it’s a solitary bereavement. And the day to day work of writing a chapter or editing a section can’t be shared with an…