With apologies to Little People everywhere…  

I posit to you that we aspiring writers are Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And it is ‘dwarfs,’ not ‘dwarves.’ I looked it up. 

   We are not bipolar; we are octoplolar.  

We are sweet, naïve, innocent, virtuous as the pure white page. We believe someday our princes and publishers will come. We whistle while we work. So maybe we’re not that careful of what we eat. Woman cannot live by poisoned apples alone. Chocolate and diet soda only kill mice in excessive quantities anyway.  

At first we are Happy and carefree. Struck by the Muse and manic obsession to write the greatest story ever told.   

Then along comes Grumpy, who is never satisfied with the prose/plot/position chosen. And even if Doc comes along to revise, equipped with a thesaurus and help from his critique group, Grumpy is not satisfied. That’s if Bashful has even allowed the critique group to look things over, because Bashful feels pretty Dopey most of the time. Pitch 400 pages in a paragraph? Like that’s ever going to happen. And he’s allergic to true criticism; nothing makes him Sneezy faster than point of view problems being pointed out. It’s enough to depress him so entirely he becomes Sleepy, naps for twenty years to avoid failure and turns into another tale altogether, Rip van Winkle.  

Which dwarf do you want to toss the farthest? 

There’s no use in grumbling
When the raindrops come tumbling
Remember, you’re the one
Who can fill the world with sunshine~ With a Smile and a Song