And the best way to know you’re a real writer? You get this gorgeous geek-writer QUERTY painting from the amazing, incredible, real painter-type ArtistAlex Zonis [originally posted on Marcia Meara’s The Write Stuff and only slightly updated.]

Okay, we get it. Writers are screwed.

Over the past year, it’s everywhere. People keep emailing/texting/posting links about surveys showing writers only earning 1/3 of pre-pandemic amounts (although since they weren’t even approaching minimum wage to start, it’s a low bar anyway…). Seriously, guys. Writing doesn’t pay? You’re depressed? This is news?

Once in New York we accidentally ate dinner at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, where the (maskless) waiters enchanted the tourists as they delivered Broadway show tunes along with their milkshakes and burgers. The staff were young, attractive, and talented. Each had probably been their high school’s most special snowflake. Even more probably, this was as close as any of them would…