You know you’re a
writer when…
- You don’t know how to do anything else
- Your back is sore
- Your taste in music is awesome and you have a rocking record collection
- You can go days without speaking to a single person
- Anyone who likes your writing is immediately far sexier than they were before they told you they liked your writing
- You spend most of the day staring at the wall
- You have at least one unpublishable manuscript hiding in your office
- Whenever you’re doing something else, you feel like you should be writing
- You never leave the house without a book
- You keep telling yourself you need to go to the gym, but to the gym you never go
- You drink too much coffee during the day and too much booze during night
- You believe stories can change the world
- You see people who say ‘I don’t read,’ as Morlocks
- You know what the hell a Morlock is
- You can convince yourself that laying on the couch, drinking beer and watching re-runs of Miami Vice is just part of your working day
- You believe that people who say ‘I would write a book, I just don’t have the time’ should be beaten with a copy of Crime & Punishment
- Nobody really knows what you do
- Complete strangers pitch you stories to write
- You are egotistic and insecure at the same time
- You fear going to an accountant
- Your favorite place in the world is your desk
- Your second favorite place in the world is a bookstore
- You fear that reading a bad review is one day going to give you a heart attack
- Working from home has lost its appeal
- It matters to you where a comma goes
- Typos haunt you
- You feel guilty about writing
- You feel guilty about not writing
- People ask you ‘Where you get your ideas from?’ and you tell them there’s a little shop around the corner from your house that sells them
- There is absolutely nothing else in the world you would rather be doing than writing
Luke Preston
Posts
Your list absolutely nailed it, down to that photo of a bent-neck cerveza in perfect synch with the gent's finger and cigarette. I guess that means we ought to add as a caveat to #30, "or reading a Luke Preston blog."
ReplyDeletePS. As much as I loved the headline photo, just think of what Cormac McCarthy got for his typewriter the next time you think of shooting yours.
It all works for me except that I had to look up Morlock. And I've read The Time Machine, dammit! Maybe we should add "you've read so many books you've forgotten what's in most of them!"
ReplyDeleteWonderful, Luke. I particularly love the picture of the guy shooting the typewriter. Back in the 80's, I saw a production of Sam Shepard's True West in a small theater in the West Village, starring two unknown actors: John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. Before the curtain opened, a sound came from the stage of metal hitting metal; it got louder and louder. It sounded like a person chained to a wall desperately trying to break himself free. It went on for a full minute before the curtain opened, revealing Malkovich, beating the bejeezes out of typewriter with a golf club. You could have picked out the writers in the audience by seeing who was laughing the loudest. I am sure there was not an Eloi among us.
ReplyDelete31. When you're stuck on your current story, you start writing lists...
ReplyDelete32. You troll lots of blogs, leaving inane comments, when you should be working on your current story...
33. You feel like a complete loser every time you read something great because YOU didn't write it...
34. Every time you read something great, you say to yourself, "I could have written that better..."
35. You tell yourself, "I may not be Luke Preston, but at least I'm not Jeffrey Siger..."
36. You wish you were Jeffrey Siger...
37. Where the hell's that Cerveza???