10 Quirks Only Writers Understand

Photo credit: kurichan+ on Flickr

Writers are weird.

As someone who embraces the titles of writer and weird proudly, it occurred to me that we writers often share a number of quirks that probably seem odd to the non-writing world.

While this is by no means a comprehensive list of writer quirks (because let’s face it, there are a lot more than ten), I thought it’d be fun to share some of my favorites*:

1. We speak in code. We get cloud-nine excited over an R&R, grab every ARC we can get our hands on, frequently reference The One and The Call, talk endlessly about our NA/YA/MG/PB/SFF/etc. WIPs and MSes, and go crazy during NaNoWriMo. All during a perfectly normal conversation on Twitter.


2. We have questionable search histories. This tumblr post basically says it all. Click through to the pictures. I promise it’s worth it. 


3. We talk about our characters like they’re real. Because they are. 


4. We never have enough books. My TBR list (there we go with the code again) is like space: infinite and always expanding. 


5. We have a love/hate relationship with words. We cry into our keyboards and jump for joy over the most amazing paragraph ever, often in the same day. Because writing is hard, but even when we hate it, we love it. 


6. We’d rather write a novel than a one-page synopsis. Writers around the world agree that synopsis-writing is the tenth circle of hell that Dante forgot to write about. 


7. We surprise ourselves with our writing. This is one quirk that I think probably surprises non-writers the most: even when we plan things out, our writing will often take a turn we didn’t expect. A character will reveal a secret we didn’t plan for, or make a decision that wasn’t in the outline, or do something that we thought was out of character until we realize we know less about his character than we originally anticipated. And personally, it’s something I’ll never tire of.


8. We pay attention to everything. When we’re upset, or get hurt, or excited, or caught out in the rain, we writers pay attention. When we see a stranger with a particular walk, or interesting look, we take mental notes. When we overhear a fascinating conversation or experience something wonderful/terrible/awe-inspiring/terrifying, we hold it in our minds for use in our writing. Because in order to create an immersive experience for our readers, we need to pay attention to every life-detail we can manage. 


9. We laugh at our own jokes. (And cry over things we do to our characters). Even when we plan for terrible things to happen to our characters (which isn’t always the case), we still get just as upset about it as our readers (hopefully) do. Also, our characters are hilarious, so by extension, so are we. 


10. We live in worlds that we created, even when we’re not writing. Writers are daydreamers, and there are few things we like to think about more than the worlds and characters that we’re writing about. And the best part? We can call it work. 

*Please note: if you don't have many (or any) of these quirks, it doesn't mean you're not a writer! This is just for fun. I promise.

What quirks would you add to the list? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

Writer @Ava_Jae shares ten fun writer quirks—how many do you have? (Click to tweet)  

Do you have any writer quirks? Come share your writer mannerisms at @Ava_Jae's blog: (Click to tweet)