“As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It’s a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.” ― Paul Rudnick
You very well might be a writer if…
- You find yourself constantly editing, be it in your car, cruising down the street when rolling past a misspelled sign, or stumbling upon grammatical no-no’s on the interwebz, and you fix these errors constantly in your mind—and not always quietly.
- You collect things—social interactions, dialogue, life events, and basically anything you spy with thy little eye—and you file them away neatly in a folder, either physical or mental, for later use.
- You take a mental step back from your life experiences, examining them with a Holmesian eye and puzzle out how to properly describe the events in words for maximum clarity and impact.
- Your imagination is like the Energizer Bunny (is that critter still around? Never get old, seriously) and it can’t stop, won’t stop providing your brain with entertainment and fresh ideas so there’s never a mental dull moment.
- After reading a good book, you’re struck with the sudden desire to write. It happens.
- You often hear voices in your head… belonging to the characters in your latest story. They just won’t shut up, carrying on conversations with one another, whether you’re ready to capture it on paper or not.
- You get sideswiped by a truckload of guilt when procrastination becomes your master and you haven’t written anything for a while, and your inner nag kicks into overtime, pressuring you to get back to business!
- You laugh at grammar jokes. Don’t be ashamed, they’re funny.
- Everything inspires you. Books, song lyrics, movies, tv programs, street ads… they all fill your head with new ideas.
- And chiefly, you very well might be a writer if you simply keep writing, regardless of being published, or lack of praise or a support network. Even if you do not net one thin dime, you write anyway, because what sense would this world make if you didn’t write about it?
MADD FICTIONAL 
My grammar is okay, so I don’t laugh at the jokes. I believe Twain wasn’t too good at it either, so that made me feel better 🙂 But seriously, a wonderful and true for me post! Cheers!
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My grammar ebbs and flows with the tides, along with my spelling (I was tragically born with typo fingers and plan to start a Kickstarter campaign to combat this deadly affliction). Truth be known, sometimes I chuckle at grammar jokes but most times I groan and roll my eyes. Glad your takeaway was positive.
Regards.
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Yeah, Kickstarter. Good idea.
😛
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Wow! I think I fit every single one of these points. Especially number 6. There are so many voices in my head that at some moments I start to worry. 🙂
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All you need to do is throw a party in your head, get ’em all liquored up and they’ll pass out soon enough. And you really only have to worry if the voices command you to do things other than write.
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That quote was definitely something that I needed to read today, as procrastination is exactly what I’m about right now. Oh, and number 5 is so true, and so annoying sometimes. And I do collect things!
Oh, this was great! Thank you!
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You’re absolutely welcome and I’m glad it helped.
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I was at the markets this morning and wrote a bit of dialogue on the side of my coffee cup.
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When you’re a writer, the world is made of paper.
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That is brilliant! I will write that on my whiteboard ( a great piece of paper.)
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Because of that little ego stroke, it’ll probably become the title of a future post.
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Haha, I am so glad about that.
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One of the things I have noticed about myself, my writer friends and my favorite published authors is that they all seem to be a bit crazay. You can’t say I’m not right. I mean if you hear the voices of your characters in your head, mostly mine yell at me to get round to their stories, then I think you might be a little crazy to give the characters entity space in your head. LOL 😀
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It’s not crazy, at all, especially if the voices don’t command you to break the law or kill. Until then, to quote from Tod Browning’s classic film, “Freaks”:
“One of us, one of us, gooble gobble gooble gobble, we accept her, we accept her”
Consider yourself at home. Consider yourself part of the family.
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Something I’ve noticed: geeks laugh at jokes that no one else gets, writers laugh at jokes that no one else wants to hear. LOL
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