scribblers getting defensive

They anticipate attack in conversation with a real or imagined critic:

"But some of us scribblers, My Dear Sir, always have a certain something unmanageable in us, that bids us to do this or that, and be done it must—hit or miss.” --Herman Melville, Letter to Richard Bentley, June 5 1849; page 132 in the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville's Correspondence

Image Credit: British Library

But here comes Frank again: well, rest is evidently not a time for dull narrative.

F. "Most industrious of scribblers, I give you good evening!"  --August 1852 - Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and  Scenes and Adventures in the Army

But now, “the morn is up again,”—and we have marched many miles fasting, and have been attracted through a turbid river by the sight of grass, and have stopped for breakfast under some cotton woods,—and in their shade I am scribbling with a pencil—  

F.—“Yes, and fine work you are making of it! The day should commence with the morning, and the brighter the better; not with the nightmare of a sleeper, who should have watched.--March 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border ["scribbling" deleted in revision of this dialogue for the 1857 book version, Scenes and Adventures in the Army]

C.—   "... I scribble by no rule, and with no object but pastime; and, to compare in some future day the old with the new tone of mind."--August 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army