A long time ago, in a world full of T-Mobile Sidekicks and Chuck Taylor All-Stars, I used to be a scene kid. I never had the disposable income to follow bands around the country, but I saw a respectable number of shows each year between 2005 and 2012. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about life before the pandemic, especially the kind of gritty, dive-bar experiences I fear are gone for good.
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Three times a day, I retrieved a handful of pills from the little blue basket on the kitchen counter. It was 2017, and I was two years into my career as a chronically ill writer. In the eight years after my Behçet’s Disease diagnosis, I’d had plenty of time to rage, cry, and contemplate my situation—how my chronic illness impacted my life, how many medications I needed to be able to live with minimal pain, how I rationed my spoons each week. What I neglected to realize was how obvious my condition was to other people.
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In October 2019, I took the plunge. I made my first short-story submission to a paying market. The rejection came twelve days later. It was a higher tier rejection—the best kind, short of one bearing a personal note from the editor. I felt energized. I was—to steal Mur Lafferty’s phrasing—a working writer.
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The holidays are here again. Cue the gift-giving anxiety! I can’t tell you what you should buy for everyone on your list — mea culpa — but I can offer up these 15 holiday gifts for your writer friends. Whether you know an aspiring novelist or someone just nominated for a major award, this guide has a little something for writers of every stripe.
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When you’ve been writing for long enough, or once you’ve read enough how-to books for writers, you start to notice just how similar all the “different” advice you’re getting sounds. In Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative, veteran writer Chuck Wendig has crafted an irreverent guide to the one thing every writer should be striving for: how to tell good stories.