Alexander Pennington is a young adult fiction writer and founder of the founder of the Aspiring Writers United Facebook group. Over the past several years, Alexander has been frequently dropping some knowledge and truth about what it means to be a writer. Except there’s a twist.
While everything that Alexander said in those tweets is completely true—as a 15-year aspiring writer myself, I can attest to it—it is done while channeling irony, satire and everything else under the comedic sun.
But it all only accentuates the beauty of being a writer: nothing really comes without a little bit of blood, sweat and tears, and if anything, personal experience gives food for thought. And food for the story.
Alexander’s content can be divided into two kinds: just tweets and memes. Both equally hilarious, though.
Many of them point out the hardships of writing—everything from lack of intrinsic motivation to just not liking your own writings.
One stems from lack of immediate reward. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day and getting that legal tender and subsequent sense of dopamine isn’t fast in the writing world.
The other, however, is a bigger hurdle because it’s more of a vicious circle. You hate your own writing, hence you don’t enjoy what you do, hence you start losing hope, hence you quit and then keep hating yourself for not writing. You can add a few other complications (like anxiety or ADHD) into the mix for good measure.
But there is also some positivity to be had in these tweets. Many writers find these frustrations relatable, which only communicate that it’s hard for everyone, so you should push on.
Besides that, it’s healthy to be able to laugh at yourself and your predicament. And once you’re done with that, there also tweets that keep it real, serving as a reminder that, all jokes aside, we can still do it. Like this one, which says “every bestselling author started as an amateur writer who didn't quit.”
A fine balance of everything.
Alexander is also the man behind the Aspiring Writers United Facebook group. It is a dedicated community focused on the love of reading, writing, and promoting aspiring writers with advice, materials, and inspirational content. As of now, the community is comprised of 130,000+ members and counting.
Besides this, there’s also a podcast that provides much of the same—advice and discussion on writing, and, of course, there’s Alexander himself, who has well over 80,000 followers on Twitter alone, with a presence on Facebook and Instagram. Oh, and there's also his book.