Category Archives: Uncategorized

Writer’s Rut Is A Pain In The Butt

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Calvin and Hobbes PanicWell, it is if you actually believe in it. I’ve run into more than my fair share of scribes who emphatically state that writer’s block is about as real as Santa, the Easter Bunny, or Steven Spielberg’s dinosaurs. I’m of the opinion that if it’s real to you, then it exists. But whichever side of the fence you personally stand on, there’s no denying the fact that writers, somewhere during the process of penning their magnum opus, can get stuck.

The first telltale sign of blockage is Oculos Computator, better known as The Stare. If you’ve ever experienced it, you know exactly what I mean. Hinder parked in your favorite writing chair, knuckles cracked, fingers nimble and hovering above your keyboard… when you become mesmerized by the siren song—I always hear Bali Hai from South Pacific—of the vast white void of your computer screen.

But you’re a determined writer, so you shake it off, gird your loins, and make resolute your desire to put words to paper. The problem is you can’t. That scene that’s so clear in your mind has suddenly become uncomfortable and difficult to write. Your synopsis refuses to mold itself into story form. An unbridgeable chasm has open up between you and the end of the story. The next scene (or chapter) is an empty pit of nothingness that stares back at you like the abyss and mocks your talent and very existence. Somehow—not through any fault of your own, surely—your characters have all been written into inescapable corners. But you have to write, that ache is in your bones, so what do you wind up doing? You rewrite, edit, rewrite, and edit what’s already been written instead of moving on.

That, my friend, is the kiss of death for creativity.

So, what are the workarounds? Hate to break it to ya, kiddo, but there ain’t no one surefire method. It’s like that line from the Diff’rent Strokes theme, “What might be right for you, may not be right for some.”

What’s that? You think that’s a cop out answer? You want what? Actual advice, even though everybody and their mother uses a different approach? Fine. Here are some of the more popular methods, in a nutshell:

Plot the story out beforehand. It’s akin to knowing the destination before you begin the journey. Stop whinging, you artsy bastard. Sure, preplanned structure can be viewed as limiting the creative spontaneity of your currently unwritten baby, but it’s only a suggested story path that you can alter along the way. Nothing’s written in stone—rewrites’ll drive that point home soon enough, trust me—until your work has been published.

Gender swap. As silly as it might sound, tinkering with the XX and XY chromosomes of your protagonist or antagonist actually helps change the character’s viewpoints and perspective. Or if you’re not up to playing God—who are you kidding? You’re a writer. You think you’re God, go on and admit it—try switching up your writing style. If you normally write in first person, why not give third person a go?

Dora, of Explorer fame, is keen to shout, “Swiper, no swiping!” But you ain’t her and no one’s watching, so why not rip a page from the Star Trek TV series plot device book (from Next Generation to Enterprise) and give your characters a mini goal they must accomplish and pair them up with other characters they absolutely cannot stand. Conflict is story. Just ask Moses. It was written on the back of one of the stone tablets. Trust me on this.

Don’t allow yourself to get hung up on formatting, grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and all that crap, and save editing for the very end. Right now, your goal is to transport that nagging story from the ether of your mind and plunk it firmly down on the page. You’ll have plenty of time to go back and gussy it up later.

And the simplest bit of advice I can offer any of you lazy sods who positively hates following patterns and formulas or doing any sort of precursor to writing; the quick and dirty solution to putting the boots to writer’s block is to stop waiting for your muse—she’s really not that into you and it’s embarrassing how you chase her around like a lovesick puppy—and simply write. Let your thoughts spill out and let it be awful and unstructured and nonsensical, just as long as you’re actively engaging in the process of writing. Hell, start a blog. Works for me.

Now, what are you doing still staring at this? Stop procrastinating. Sally forth and be writeful.

— Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Your Writing Says More About Your Character Than You Realize

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

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Creating worlds? That’s the easy bit. Populating them with three dimensional characters… that’s a bit trickier. Whether you write for a living, a hobby, for sport, or just to have a laugh, you will eventually reach a point in your storytelling where you’re forced to pluck the innocent bystanders from your life and slap them smack dab in the middle of your literary dreamscape. Don’t be embarrassed. It happens to us all.

But just because a fictional character has a fleshy counterpart, imbued with their quirks, verbal crutches and personality tics, it doesn’t always mean they’re actually memorable.

So, how do you combat that? Dig, my friend. You need to burrow underneath the surface layer affectations and unearth the true source of their core character and examine what piqued your interest in the first place.

Even the most boring person you know can be a source of inspiration in your writing if you scratch the surface carefully enough. As corny as it sounds, we all carry within us a wealth of creativity and inspiration. Your job is to look deeper.

One of the most important parts of being a writer, aside from textual flourishes and clever turns of phrase, is the ability to see the world, both the one you’re creating and the one you live in, through their eyes. What are their views on major and minor things? Are they blessed or cursed with odd perceptions of the way the world should and/or actually works? Do they engage in activities that exist outside social norms?

Once you’ve identified these tidbits, you have the first building blocks for your memorable character’s foundation. But it’s only the beginning. You’ll need to build on this in order to make your newly birthed person dynamic.

Since you’re not creating a clone or an exact replica of your best bud or the nosy neighbor down the hall who tracks you via her peephole every time you leave or enter your front door—seriously, lady, get a life—you’ll want to take a few pages from Baron Victor von’s notebook and Frankenstein your creation up a bit.

If you do your job properly, your patchwork person will seem more believable because they contain traits your friends have that you secretly covet—we covet what we see everyday, Clarice—family member habits that absolutely drive you up the wall, as well as the little insecure bits of yourself you pray nobody really notices (FYI: they do, they’re just too polite to bring it up in conversation). Stop moaning, you’ll always be a part of the mix. You can’t help it. You’re the person you know the best. Yup, it’s true and you heard it here first.

The best thing about your ethereal Prometheus is only you will be able to see the stitches that hold the monstrosity together. To everyone else, the jigsaw pieces fit together seamlessly. But you’re still not done.

You can’t have your bouncing baby entity walking around all starkers—well, you can if you’re writing one of those 50 Shades thingies—so you’ll need to dress them with your imagination and layer in true life details like articles of clothing, substantiating them as a new independent life form while better solidifying your understanding of them.

Then, to top things off, dab them with a little Eau de real desires—just behind the ears—and spray obstacles in the air and have them walk through the mist, before you powder them down with motivations.

And voilà! Take a step back and view your bonafide multidimensional, absolutely-fictional-but-seems-so-damn-real-it’s-scary character. Now all you have to do is repeat the process several more times.

Hey, I never said this would be easy.

Sally forth and be writeful.

— Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Sleep-Shaming the Homeless

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Image © 2011 by Patrick G. Ryan www.snarkinfested.com

There’s nothing good about being homeless, not one solitary thing, though I’ve run into more than a few people who claim they’ve been living on the streets between ten and forty years and they wear it like a bizarre badge of pride. If, however, you cannot avoid being without a home, New York isn’t the worst place to be for the simple fact you will never go hungry unless that is your aim. You can’t swing a dead cat in the city so nice they named it twice without hitting a soup kitchen. Plenty of places to throw some food down your gullet. Not always the tastiest morsels but enough to help you survive another day. Sleep, however, is a whole other kettle of fish.

If you are unable to secure a place to sleep in the overcrowded shelter system or a three-quarter house and you make your bed on the street, you quickly learn just how important a good night’s rest is and just how little of that you actually get. Veterans of the lifestyle have secured their hidey-holes and guard the location like it’s gold, others will lay out cardboard mattresses wherever they please, in doorways of closed businesses, on church steps, park benches, subway lines or even in the center of the sidewalk. But no matter how much sleep you manage to eke out at night, during the day, your body will crave the sleep it needs and it will eventually shut you down.

While there are some working homeless, a vast majority are unemployed, on benefits, disability, or supplemental security income and have to find places to spend their time in order to kill the day. No matter how strong-willed you are or how desperately you try to stay awake, eventually you will sit down somewhere and nod out, which is a big no-no in the Big Apple.

This needs to change.

Instead of having overzealous security guards make a public scene out of waking a person who closed their eyes for a moment, there should be places for people to grab a quick nap. I understand that most of the older security guards used to be in law enforcement in one aspect or another and intimidation tactics are part of their arsenal but is closing your eyes in a public place that severe a crime that a person should be forced to wear a scarlet letter?

Why must these mini-dictators get such a thrill out of sleep-shaming the homeless?

Don’t they understand the effects a lack of sleep has on the human psyche? And how that lack might affect the way they behave towards authority, the public at large, or even fellow homeless persons? Does no one understand that sometimes letting a person grab a power nap can make all the difference in how they cope with society and the day?

I know this is child’s logic. There’s no simple solution to sleep-shaming and the bigger issue is that of homelessness. I think it’s time for the thought process to turn from simply getting the homeless off the streets which means pushing the homeless from one neighborhood to another (that’s right upper east side I’m looking at you) or worst yet, processing people through Bellevue, which is almost as bad as being sent to prison due to a lack of health and safety. The adjusted goal should be to provide employment opportunities and safe, affordable housing to those who haven’t given up, who want to rejoin society as productive members, even if it requires services rendered to be bartered for room and board.

 

In the meantime, should you come across me sitting peacefully with my eyes closed, please give me a few moments rest before you disturb my peace. And by all means, try to be respectful should you need to wake me.

I may be homeless, but I’m still human. I still matter.

My Humanity Falls Piece By Piece

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

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Recently I was asked to write a testimonial for one of the soup kitchens I frequent and because today has been one of those tough days when I just keep rubbing up against the wrong people though I do my best to avoid them, I figured I’d post it here for easy access when I’m online seeking a distraction from the realities of the day.

Through a series of unfortunate events, I became homeless in the back half of 2012. No relatives or friends to use as a temporary support system, I hit the streets of Manhattan without a clue as to where to go, what to do, or what life held in store for me. I struggled for months to survive, spending what little pocket money I had on dollar pizzas, a slice of which I ate every other day in order to stretch out my dwindling funds.

Then one day while I was waiting in the cold for the public library to open, I met two women, sisters, who turned out were homeless like me. They were kind enough to take me to a few locations where I could get some food, which came at a most opportune time as I was down to my last dollar, and that’s no exaggeration. One of the first places they brought me to was a special soup kitchen that changed my entire experience.

Different from other soup kitchens (please understand that the words soup kitchen and ministry are interchangeable here, just as the homeless are referred to as guests), this particular ministry is a great place for guests to start the day. Both the in-house staff and volunteers who help prepare coffee and serve hot meals to the guests are both polite and friendly, which may seem like a given, but it is really a precious and special thing considering most of them make the effort to wake up that extra bit earlier and make themselves available to serve guests of varying temperament before going about their workaday worlds, when most of us find it hard enough just to simply get up and deal with the daily grind.

On my darkest days, when the world doesn’t make sense and I can’t quite seem to catch a glint of the light at the end of this expansive tunnel I’m traveling through, it’s a great comfort for me to have a place where I can be, even for a short while, where I can almost feel human again. That’s the thing people rarely consider when they think about or discuss homelessness. Not being considered a productive part of society, being ignored, avoided, shunned and ridiculed… it chips away at the soul. Bit by bit, by living on the streets, even the strongest person will start to lose confidence, humanity, and even sanity. In my experience, this ministry has helped me hold on to these vital bits of myself, while clinging on to hope as well.

I realize I probably should be pointing out specific instances but truth to tell there are so many, you’d be reading this testimonial for days. Suffice it to say, I have always been greeted with kindness and positive attitudes, even when my attitude was less than civil, and wound up meeting a lot of kind and caring people, some of whom I actually consider friends.

And not to sound unappreciative of other soup kitchens, but the several I have attended cannot hold a candle to this ministry. Compared to some of the larger soup kitchens, this one tiny building is filled with more people who make a concerted effort to help guests out with more than just the serving of a meal. People who place a great deal of importance into what they serve to guests, be it a meal, the Word, or just plain fellowship. I can’t imagine what my experience out here on the streets would be like after all this time without their existence and shamefully, I don’t think I have ever conveyed to them just how much I appreciate what they have done and continue to do for me.

Perhaps this will help them understand.

As I mentioned earlier, today has been one of those chip away days. It seems I’m surrounded by people with either anger or mental health issues and they’re all looking to pay that pain forward.

When you inhabit the same public spaces as other homeless people, a bizarre thing begins to happen. Even if you keep yourself to yourself, you will acquire enemies. You may not even know their names or faces. Grievances will be plucked from thin air and thrust upon you. You will be challenged daily. Yours must be the cooler head. The one gifted with enough foresight to see the consequences and choose the best course of action for your continued safety and freedom.

It is far from an easy thing to do.

At night, when you finally find a spot to rest, you replay the accounts of the day, wondering just how much of your humanity you’ve lost in each one of these abrasive encounters? How much of you will be left when there’s nothing left to give?

I can only pray tomorrow will be a slightly easier day.

Hopping Mad

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

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Hopping turnstiles is wrong, I got that, so please spare me the morality lessons and guilt trips. I won’t even attempt to justify my actions by using the outrageous price of a single ride fare as an excuse. What I would ask is that you try to see it from my point of view. When I don’t have the fare and can’t convince an exiting passenger to give me a swipe, and can’t locate a guy who knows how to bend 1 or 2 trip expired metrocards to squeeze an illegal free ride out of them, when the overnight weather prevents me from sleeping outdoors, I have to find shelter somewhere and the subway system is the last chance saloon. It’s not without its share of risks though. Plain clothes cops are hip to the deal and bust fare-dodgers on the regular.

But that’s not the point of this post. I want you to sit right back and listen to what happened to me last night:

I’m not sure what it is about me, my genetic makeup, my lot in life, or if I just give off a certain vibe, but the truth is I cannot attract good people into my life and last night was a prime example. After midnight, when a few of the remaining public atriums shut down, I begin my shark prowl, always on the move, trying to build up ambient body heat to keep myself warm. It works pretty good for a while, but somewhere around 2:00 am the temperature begins a noticeable drop and the wind picks up and the only thing I’m looking for is a place to sit and shut my eyes for a couple of hours without being exposed to the elements and risk getting sick (homelessness and a cold/flu is not a good mix). So, I hit a subway station.

Depending on my location, I try to steer for one of the few stations that have a couple of spots to cop a squat outside the turnstile area. When I got to the station, I had company. There was a woman sitting not too far away. White, late twenties/early thirties, bleach blonde, pockmarked face. A once pretty woman brought low by a hard life. If I were casting a movie, she’d make a perfect junkie hooker.

As is customary when more than one person is waiting to hop the same turnstile, I played the waiting game, you know, see who makes the first move. What I’m actually doing is feeling out whether the other person is a cop or not. Under normal circumstances either a third party will breeze in no hesitation and hop (which if it doesn’t flush out a cop usually signals the coast is clear), or one of the potential fare-dodgers will admit defeat and leave, or bite the bullet, hop and hope for the best. none of these scenarios played out last night.

I unburdened myself of my backpack and attempted to get comfortable when leather-jacketed drug whore stepped to me and demanded to know what I was doing in the station. I’m a native New Yorker, which means my first response is to ignore strangers and the their unsolicited conversations. It was none of her business and I had no desire to explain myself. Boy, did she hate being blanked, but what did I care? I ignored her some more. Then she accused me of stalking her. Now, I was forced to respond.

I attempted to convince her that I couldn’t care less about who she was, where she was going, or what she was doing, but these things are really indefensible. Just how do you prove you’re not stalking someone? She insisted I was hired by someone (she never mentioned whom) to follow her. When she saw I wouldn’t be moved, she began berating me with every stereotypical insult a woman could hurl at a man. I was ugly, smelly, a loser who couldn’t get any pussy, yadda yadda yadda. Strange thing is, I wasn’t insulted. I just stood there and stared at her, head cocked to one side like the RCA/Victor dog staring at the victrola. I was trying to consider whether she was crazy or not, but I noticed something odd: as close as she got to me, she never touched me. All her threats of bringing me down low until she forced me to leave the station and she never once invaded my personal space. Also, whenever people came up to the turnstile she turned away and her attack toned down a bit.

It was clear she simply wanted to hop the turnstile but needed to chase me away. I’m sure in her world, psycho bitch clears the room pretty damn quickly, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I was tired from walking for two hours and sleep was nipping at the edges of my consciousness. Probably not the smartest move. I could have left the station and waited for the next train so she could hop in privacy, but simply I plugged my earbuds in and went back to ignoring her.

I can’t tell you what new batch of insults she hurled my way because The Pretenders drowned her out but I can say I’ve never seen a person turn that shade of red before. Seeing how unaffected I was, I guess she decided to up her game. As the next train arrived she made an unexpected lunge for my backpack. My assumption was she intended to sling it over the turnstiles, forcing me to either pay the fare or hop first. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and psycho-leather-clad-prozzie-smack-heads. Her hand never touched the bag because I shoved her away. Wasn’t even aware I did it. I was on complete automatic, protecting my bag. It’s the last of my worldly possessions and nobody touches it without a fight. She was a tiny thing, 90 lbs. soaking wet, and she was more than a little shocked that the shove moved her back so far.

I unplugged the earbuds and the verbal assault was going full force. She swore on her family’s life that she was going to make me leave. I told her she could rant all she wanted, as long as she didn’t touch me or my belongings. She made another half-hearted attempt of grab my backpack and I was forced to put it back on (the thing weighs a ton and my back was aching). Then it dawned on me: in shoving her, I physically touched her, which was technically an assault. And just like that, my mind began traveling down a path that did not bode well for me. What if she claimed I attacked her? Attempted to sexually abuse her? All because I wanted to find a place to sit and recharge my body and brain for a few hours.

Again, I should have left. If this were a movie and I was sitting in the audience, I’d be screaming at the screen, “Just walk away, you moron!” What did I do instead? I dug into my pocket for my iPhone that hasn’t had service in over three years and pretended to call the cops. She dared me. This woman was so committed to her cause that she was going to call my bluff. As I had begun the stupid charade, I engaged in a mock telephone conversation with a 911 operator. She stood her ground… but the yelling stopped. She paced the station as I told the imaginary operator where I was and relayed the entire interaction. She was actually going to make me play this through to the end.

When I began to describe her, the sluice gate of insults started up again and I held the phone out in her direction. “Can you hear her? She’s crazy. I’m afraid someone might get hurt or worse.” And that was the clincher. Leather Tuscadero pivoted on her studded boot heels and left the station, cursing all the way.

I got extremely luck that time, I’m well aware of it. Maybe next time I’ll have the common sense to just walk away.

I doubt it, though.

Until next time, I sincerely hope I don’t see you on the breadline.

Countdown to Bummed Out

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

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bummed out

/bəmd out/

adjective
a state of mental abandon that leaves you in poor physical condition through lack of desire and care.

origin
New York, circa 2014, attributed to the Pendant Sisters

I was first introduced to the term bummed out by the Pendant Sisters — not their actual name and though I’m sure they’ll never read this blog, it’s not my desire to put their information on blast — while I was still new to the streets.

The sisters, we’ll call them Sally and Susan, were step-siblings, same mother, different fathers, separated at an early age, who were miraculously reunited on the streets after each had become homeless under different circumstances. I can’t remember how the ice was broken between us but they were the first people who showed me any real kindness, as homeless people tend to either isolate themselves or pair off into cliques within the displaced peoples caste system. It’s not hard to understand why they’re not an arms open wide type of community.

Sally and Susan hipped me to the best soup kitchens in which to get a decent meal on each particular day as well as the prime spots for things like clean public restrooms, free wifi, and places to charge your phone without making a purchase.

They’re what I call arm’s length friendly and I totally understand their caution and apprehension. They are two women having to survive in a city full of sadistic and insane people and I, despite seeming nice, am a still man and a relative stranger to them. As tough as it is simply being homeless, I can only imagine it’s ten times harder to be a homeless woman.

Anyway, one day I was palling around with them as they patiently showed me various no hassle locations (places where cops tend not to roust you for loitering, or being vagrant without a license), their faces dropped when their eyes fell on a man splayed out across a sidewalk bench. Nearly unrecognizable as human under all the layers of caked on filth, you couldn’t come close to calling what he wore clothes. They were tattered bits of ratty cloth held together in places by safety pins. His shoes were little more than cut up sections of newspaper secured around his feet by a series of rubberbands. When they tried to speak to him to see if he was okay, he responded with gibberish.

They were bummed out to see him bummed out.

As we walked away, they told me his back story. He was once an engineer who earned his degree at MIT and owned a successful business for a number of years. Then he stumbled upon a bit of hard luck when he lost several important contracts that bankrupted his business and his marriage of over twenty years ended in a divorce that wiped him clean.

When they first met him, he was a good natured and intelligent man, optimistic about getting back on his feet. They were truly shocked to see him in his current state, which got me to thinking about how homelessness can get inside your brain and make you abandon all hope and allow you to slide further and further away from being a functional member of society.

A truly frightening thought and I wonder just how far away I am from my breaking point, and what will be the final straw that collapses my resolve and causes me to bum out?

Until next time, I sincerely hope I don’t see you on the breadline.

No Rest For The Homeless

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

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Never aspire to be homeless, no matter how tough your living situation may be at the moment or how tough you think you are or how you imagine roughing it to be some sort of grand adventure. It’s a lousy way to exist. That’s right, I said exist, because when you have no place to live and cannot feed yourself what you want to eat when you want to it, or wash when you feel dirty, you’re not living, you’re existing.

Having said that, should you ever find yourself societally displaced — with no income or shelter — there are a few cities in The States where being homeless is preferable. New York is one of those places.

If you’re willing to put in the legwork and travel throughout the Big Apple, you won’t go hungry. There are several soup kitchens scattered throughout the city that offer either breakfast, lunch or dinner, and most places offer seconds, containers to take food away, and a bag meal that usually consists of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a juice box and a piece of fruit. Not fine dining by any stretch of the imgaination, but it’s food.

What you won’t get enough of is sleep. Sure, during the summer you can stretch out in the park during the day, but at night when there’s a chill in the air, a chill that settles in your bones, or when it rains or snows? That’s when you find out what being homeless is all about.

Sleeping in parks is a thing of the past. Most parks close between 10pm to 1am. Church steps because it’s sanctuary? Not in this town, brother. You might have heard stories in the news or seen in the movies the homeless people who build cardboard shelters on street gratings or up against the sides of buildings and while that does happen, depending on your location, cops will roust you.

Since New York truly is a city that doesn’t sleep, public transportation runs 24 hours and most homeless men and women find their preferred subway line and ride it end to end throughout the night. This is usually good for a couple of hours at a pop, but trains tend to go out of service after a couple of trips and cops are present at the last stops to push folks along. Plus, you need money for the fare for this sleeping option. $2.50 may not seem like much to you, but when you’re flat broke, the fare might as well be $25.00. Sure, you can hop the turnstile, but if you get caught, there’s a hefty fine to pay, or if you run up against the wrong cop, you could be looking at an arrest.

But what about a homeless shelter? You may have heard how dangerous they can be and some are filled with ex-convicts and the mentally challenged who may or may not be off their meds, but for the ones that aren’t, there are either waiting lists or lottery systems that you have to compete for on a daily basis, and many of these are only accessible through a referral from public assistance, battered women’s organizations, rescue centers, etc.

Speaking from personal experience, there are nights when the weather won’t allow me to sleep and I become a street shark, always on the move to keep warm, in hopes of finding some unoccupied nook to hunker down in and rest my eyes and my mind, if only for a few moments. It rarely happens and spend most nights winding my way through city streets until the sun comes up. That can wear on your soul quick fast and in a hurry, trust me on this.

So, hold on to your homes, if you’re at all able to. Living on the streets is no kind of life for any reasonably sane person.

Until next time, hope I don’t see you on the breadline.

My Final (I Promise) 20 Reasons You Might Be A Writer

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” — George Eliot

You very well might be a writer if…

  1. There are no innocent bystanders in your life. Everybody becomes a character in your writing, warts and all. Especially the warts.
  2. You read the same piece you’ve written over and over again and your inner critic vacillates between: “I can’t believe I wrote something so beautiful” and “What the hell was I thinking? That’s it! I’m done! Never again! It’s back to planespotting for me!”
  3. You lose your mind if anyone attempts to organize that untidy mound of paper on your floor beside your desk, because you know exactly where every piece of writing and research is located in the pile.
  4. You can’t read your old writing from the periods when you actually believed with all your heart and soul that you were a naturally gifted writer, especially during your teen years. You just can’t. It’s too cringe-inducing.
  5. Writers block is as real to you as one of your annoying family members, only this one lives inside your head, taking up valuable space, and refuses to pick up after itself, pitch in with the chores or pay its fair share of the rent.
  6. You casually insert words you’ve invented into conversation and totally ignore the “Wait… what?” expression on your friends’ faces.
  7. The slightest noise from the outside world, the off-tune ice cream truck jingle, kids playing in the street, dogs barking, pushes you off the precipice of sanity in a Tell Tale Heart manner.
  8. A telephone book or an office directory is your character name generator.
  9. The blank page is your personal version of the First Gate of Hell and the cursor taunts you by blinking in Morse code: “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate” and despite your fear, you’re slightly pleased with yourself because you know that translates as, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
  10. You call a pen without ink a dead soldier.
  11. Writers block makes you the most active person on the planet. Clean the fridge? No problem. Clear the leaves out of the rain gutter? Sure thing. Solve Goldbach’s conjecture (you know, every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes)? I’m on it. Spend quality time with the mother-in-law? Um, I think I might try my hand at writing, if you don’t mind.
  12. You hate the phrase, “Well, you’re the writer” whenever someone has to take notes or minutes or make a shopping list. Okay, maybe not the shopping list. It is a list, after all.
  13. You become a human spellcheck and thesaurus for your friends, family and co-workers.
  14. You’ve stubbed your toe or banged your shin in the dark, scrounging for a pen and piece of paper to jot down the absolutely brilliant idea that blindsided you in the middle of the night.
  15. You collect stories on the odd ways people have accidentally met their maker or have been murdered. For research purposes only, of course.
  16. You automatically rewrite the endings to disappointing movies or TV series in your head.
  17. You own more than ten novels that contain your own personal annotations and notes, but you don’t stop there. You also annotate .PDF files and have broken the cardinal sin of making notes in a borrowed book (shame on you).
  18. You own a box that contains old hotel card keys, movie, theater and airline ticket stubs, assorted restaurant and bar sundries (bar coasters, swizzel sticks, fruity drink umbrellas, menus), receipts, and the like, not only for future reference but for the tactile memories associated with each item.
  19. You hate your most embarrassing moments because they play over and over in the movie theater of your mind but revel in the fact that they’ll make great material for a future story.
  20. And finally, you very well might be a writer if writing is the beast that terrifies you to the very core of your being, yet you love it with all your heart, anyway.

Sally forth and be writeful.

— Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys