You Might Be a Writer If...

Culled from friends, Twitters, and various other sources we encourage every dabbler in the literary arts to check themselves against this quick list to make sure you haven't become a Dreaded Author:
(Image courtesy of and copyright to Saphirestaub on DA)


- You know the max wordcounts for all genres, and obsess about staying under 80K

- You know what a genre is

- And you will defend your favorite genre to the death

- You know all major agents names and what they rep, but don't remember if you ate lunch.

- Your love for office supplies is more of a religion than an obsession...

-You know what a participle is and you can dangle your dangerously

- Someone mentions there's a draft in the room and you look for paper

- When airport security asks if anything in your bag can be used as a weapon you actually stop and wonder if you *couldn't* use everything as a weapon (actually, this may prove that you just read too many murder mysteries)

- You can talk for hours about imaginary people

- You've been caught covering the back of tests and reports with short stories

- You scribble down plot ideas while stuck in traffic or in line at the store

- You have very definite opinions about Harry Potter and Twilight

- People watching is research

- You've seriously considered asking to be arrested and booked just so you know the process for your next book

- You wonder if you can write off your trip to Grandma's as a work expense

- You've ever done something dangerous for the sake of research (skydiving, white water rafting, jumping off high ledges, letting kids have playdough)

- People think you talk to yourself but you swear you're just talking to the characters in your head

- You lose sleep over the character's problems

- You've ever turned your grocery list into a quest.

- If during daily conversation with friends or family you ever think 'Wow that would be a great line for (insert character name).'

- You refer to your extensive fiction collection as reference books.

- You choose your which restaraunt to eat at by whether it has enough light to read and write by.

- You are reading this.

- When someone makes you mad, you plot your revenge so you can turn it into a murder mystery.

- You consider daydreaming a "business trip."

- You view "The Cat in the Hat" as a tax-deductable working expense.

- Your friends think you're free to spend time with them when you're working.

- You get irritated when a grocery store doesn't say "10 items or fewer"

- Apostrophes can enrage you. Especially misused.

- You edit exams while you take them.

-Anywhere you look in your house, you find notebooks and pens.

- You correct other people's grammar as they're speaking.

- You get up in the middle of the night to write something down.

- You talk to the voices inside your head, and they talk back.

- You play the same song over and over to get into the right mood for one of the chapters.

- If your desk (and every other flat surface in the house) looks like a file cabinet exploded.

- If you've ever been caught "checking out" a co-worker - and what was really on your mind was how many burlap bags it would take to dispose of a victim about his size and where you'd have to make the cuts. (actually this might be a sign of other issues - but D writes murder mysteries and horror so I guess that's the excuse)

- You refuse to go to bed until you finish editing a chapter... no matter how long it takes.

- You have to remind yourself not to critique your boss' and coworkers' writing.

- You count each rejection and proudly set it aside.

- You spend hours editing Wikipedia for style and grammar.

- You belong to a critique/writing group that will keep this topic alive for weeks and never repeat themselves. And laugh hysterically when you see the list.

- If your blog/forum posts say things like "I didn't know what to do with Jim, so I had him shot", and you don't think anything looks funny about it.

- Someone asks "does anybody have a pen" and everyone looks at you.