I'm a writer myself, and female to boot, so this question's been dogging me, too. I used to think, before I really wrote much for public consumption, that writers were suicidal because they had to remain socially aloof, that they couldn't participate in life and observe it at the same time, and this would, naturally, make them sad, at least, if not hopelessly lonely.

Now I think that writers' block and depression are the same thing, that they have the same consequences and causes. I think that writing comes from the same fog-bog of the near sub-conscious as one's self-perception, that they are fished from the same place, that inspiration becomes everything that's good, and negative feedback becomes everything that's bad. They're tied together the minute you become a writer, like the Argentinean dollar was connected to the American. What drags one, drags the other.

I would say that nothing but an unbreakable ego will stave this off, but it didn't work with Hemingway, did it?

Future commenters: Go ahead, tear this comment to pieces. I'll just go cry in a broom closet or something.