You’re Probably a Writer If…

Can you identify with writers’ perspectives, quirks, or various forms of madness? Go on–see how you compare. No one need know. 

You are probably a writer if:

• You can provide, offer, suggest, recommend, propose a minimum of five synonyms for any word.
• Your blood tests prove that for every part blood, there is one part coffee.
• The two best compliments about your writing are, “I cried so hard” and “I lost sleep.”
• Instead of talking to someone you want to get to know, you first consult their bookshelf.
• No matter how upset you are at any time, something inside you says, “How would I describe this feeling? And how could I incorporate it in a story?”
• Your conversation regarding the book you are reading features words like, “narrative voice,” “dramatic content,” “sentence structure,” and “third person, objective voice.”
• The last person to use some of your favorite words was Shakespeare.
• You mentally rewrite bad grammar.
• Poorly written novels frustrate you to no end…and make you feel really good.
• You lose your trust in your favorite authors when they violate point of view.
• You know where the nearest pen is at any given moment.
• You’ve ever lost your ability to speak, move, or blink when you’ve thought of a new plot idea.
• The only print left on your backspace key is the B. And even that’s half gone.
• You act out facial expressions, gestures, and noises when writing.
• You’ve ever said “I’m a writer” as an excuse or much-needed explanation.
• Some of your favorite stories and movies haven’t been written yet.
• Your best friends aren’t real.
• You have printed manuscripts on your bookshelf. They’re just stacks of paper tied with string, but that IS where they belong, after all.
• People die in your head. And more often than you’d ever admit.
• You know more about your characters than you do about your family or friends.
• At 1:30 am, when you reread what you just wrote, you say, “Wow, did I write that?” At 1:30 pm, you say, “Good grief, I can’t believe I wrote that.”
• You have such a reputation at word games that you can only play with people who have just met you.
• You think about your book when reading someone else’s.
• You’ve splashed soap suds all over the kitchen and couldn’t have been happier. After all, you figured out the perfect resolution to your climax AND kept your protagonist alive.
• Reading novels is not very high on your list of relaxing things to do.
• People tell you of their personal nemesis and you can’t help but think about the “bad guy’s” motivation, personal history, self-justifying internal dialogue, and character arc.
• You talk to your computer screen. Often in more than one voice.
• When scanning a bookshelf, you read author name, publisher, and title, in that order.
• When you reread your writing and find misplaced punctuation, you think you’re a fraud.
• Your fingers spend almost as much time on the keyboard as your forehead.