YOU KNOW YOU'RE A WRITER IF:

In January I posted my personal
"Glossary of terms for writers". I had a blast with that so I thought, a mere six months later why not, you know you're a writer if.
So here goes. Hope you enjoy and if you see yourself, all the better and if you don't, add some in the comments.

YOU KNOW YOU’RE A WRITER IF:

Getting published is more exciting than getting a date.

The last thing you think about before you go to sleep, (the story, the plot, the main character, the secondary characters, the switch, word-count, chapter transitions and title), is the first thing you thought about that morning.

You take better care of computer than you do of your pacemaker.

You forgot your anniversary because you were thinking about the misplaced comma on page four, paragraph three, line two, and you think it’s no big deal because it wasn’t needed anyway, or maybe it was, so you leave it in, then take it out, was that yesterday? How many years?

You believe the overuse of punctuation marks are Band-Aids for sloppy writing.

 

Redundancy helps you remember what you forgot when you wrote it the first time.

You know more about the agent you queried than you know about the prison record of your daughter’s boyfriend.

Your kitchen table looks like your office and your office looks like the empty bedroom it once was.

You resent the time your friends and family demand of you and then write about what a wonderful resource they are, how much you love them and how supportive they are of your efforts.

You can’t remember what you ate for breakfast but can recall how many bullets were in the bad-guy’s gun, and the placement and size of the wart on his ass, in a short story you wrote when you were nineteen.

You hesitate when asked to recite the ages and birthdates of your children but can spiel off the multi-century ancestry of your hero’s companion in book two of your trilogy about six fingered women saving the world.

You speak about the agent you don’t have yet like she’s the successful cousin you haven’t seen in twenty years.

When amidst your latest project the only time you go food shopping is when you’re out of coffee and toilet paper.

When asked about how your husband is, you answer, who?

When asked about how your wife is, you answer, which one?

When asked about you kids, you answer, I have kids?

You believe the best time to write, is on Sundays when the rest of your family goes to church. (You ask them to pray for a publication date).

You need Facebook like runners need a water-station, like boxers need a stool between rounds, like football players need a two minute warning, like toddlers need a nap, like senior citizens need a nap, like teachers need the summer off.

Rejection doesn’t hurt anymore but it does disappoint; it doesn’t cut but you bleed anyway.

Hang-in, hang-on, stay calm/carry on, don’t give up, don’t give in, stay the course, persevere and never ever in any way, shape, form or manner quit, become the clichés of your trade.

Every morning, before you get out of bed, you wonder, is today is the day you get “the call”, followed by, why can’t I wake-up like everybody else and just go pee.