10 Ways to Know You’re a Writer

You’ve wondered, right?

You’ve asked yourself this question many times and you’re reading this post to find out, “Am I a writer?”

Like a hypochondriac checking out WebMD over and over again, you scour articles and blog posts for the telltale signs and symptoms that you’ve got what it takes to declare yourself a writer.

I do, too. That’s why I came up with this list of 10 Ways to Know You’re a Writer.

After reading the list, click on the links to the other great blog posts and articles that relate to each of these ideas.

Please leave me a comment about which symptoms you come down with most often, or add some new ones of your own.

You Know You’re a Writer if…

10. You take really long showers because you’re working on a writing problem or your fictional characters are having conversations in your head and you’re eavesdropping on them. (I came up with the idea for this blog post while taking a shower this morning.)

9.  Your favorite hashtag on Twitter is #amwriting (<=== or these nine other hashtags).

8. Your friends and family ask you to “pick a movie already” when you’re on Netflix and you tell them, “I’m not picking a movie, I’m reading the synopses.”

7. You check Amazon.com synopses for books that are similar to the one you are writing right now (you also say “synopses” a lot).

6. You have a Pinterest board where you pin cool spaces for writing retreats.

5. When you’re out with friends, instead of engaging in conversation you narrate your life – “Paul sat on his bar stool nursing a half-finished beer. Conversations swirled around him, but he was lost in his thoughts. He should be home writing, but his friends insisted he come out with them to celebrate his latest book, All By Myself’.”

4. You constantly notice grammatical errors in other people’s writing but can’t seem to find them in your own.

3. You love words and could spend hours pouring through 500 billion of them or enjoy lexicography.

2. Your Evernote app, filing cabinet, desktop, etc. is overflowing with so many ideas, photos and articles for future stories and blog posts that it’s hard to find the one you’re looking for when you need it.

1. But the number one way to know you are a writer is – You declare yourself to be one and then sit in the chair and write!

There are a LOT of great 10 Ways to Know articles out there on the internet. My Google search turned up 1,650,000,000 hits in .039 seconds. That makes 16.5 billion things to know. That’s about 2.28 things to know for each person living on Earth today. Here are 10 of the 1.65 billion 10 Ways articles I took a look at for this post.

1. 10 Ways to Know if You’re Confident – or Arrogant
2. 10 Ways to Find Happiness
3. 10 Ways to Know that You’re a Stoner
4. 10 Ways to Know Very Quickly if your Man is a Psychopath
5. 10 Ways to Develop Your Personal Style
6. 10 Ways to Alter Your Consciousness Without Drugs
7. Top 10 Ways to Annoy the Locals
8. 10 Ways to Help Your Community in 30 Minutes or Less
9. 10 Ways to Know You’re Having a Hot Flash
10. 10 Ways to Be a Great Dad