*selfish grin* you have no idea. You know you're a writer when you obsess with keeping a clean page (i.e. not doodling across the entire length of it) and when you find yourself buying twenty dollars worth of writing utensils withing a period of three weeks while the ones you have in your purse are sufficient. (Somehow, someway, I believe the pens will give me more creative power. But I'm proven wrong everytime I pick one up and discover my writing is the same as it has always been).
...you can't sleep at night because you have an idea for something and you won't be able to sleep until you write it down.
1) When you prefer to spend Saturday nights alone reading a book or writing one. 2) When writingforums is the default webpage in your browser, instead of the sleazy, hot..... well, you know what I mean.
When you're having a conversation with someone, they tell you something that happened to them, and the first thing that comes to mind in response is "oh, yeah, I had a character who did that once..."
When you read a bestseller and say, "Christ, not only can I write better than this, I have bloody well published better than this." When the above spurs you to write more. When you find yourself writing or reading every single day. When you find yourself creating stories because a world without the stories you create is less beautiful and wondrous. When you write a story that brings a tear to someone else's eyes upon reading it.
When buying a (paper) notebook takes half an hour because you couldn't live with the strong sort on dimensions, paper quality and binding.
When you evaluate everyone you meet for main character status When you do really stupid things for "research purposes" (It's my excuse for pretty much every stupid thing I do. )
When you find lots of scraps of paper and receipts etc. scribbled on. When you see some stranger and think 'oh! they would be a perfect character in my story ...'
When you idly think about grammar and tense When you stop in the middle of a conversation and say, "Excuse me, I have to write that down..."
When you daydream about your characters and stories. When you get angry at someone for interrupting you when you're 'in the zone' writing something.
Exactly. I couldn't agree with you more You know you're a writer when a million different ideas come to your mind all at once, and you leave the room, with a movie still playing, to just grab a pen and a notebook.
When you narrate what you're doing as if it was a scene, and think of what could be a good metaphor in what you're doing.
Yes to both!! I've lost track of how many times I've wailed at my husband about the interruption thing. It's hard to not sound shrewish when I snap, "I'm trying to write a difficult scene and you're breaking the flow." My little addition to the post? When you go some place new, stop everything to take in the colors, sights, sounds and even the smells so you can imprint into your experience and memory for potential use. "Write what you know," I've always heard. So, know as much as you can.
... when, in the middle of a conversation, you let out a gasp and someone says, "What? You just wrote another book?" ... when you forego family gatherings to work on your latest WIP.
