Below are opinions I’ve heard expressed about who would make a good writer.
Some of them may sound unfairly judgmental and derogatory to writers in general? Don’t worry about it, because, ironically enough, all of the viewpoints have come from writers themselves, aspiring or otherwise.
- A Control Freak: Writers like to have control… To the extent that they revel in controlling others’ lives. They write so they can act puppeteers, to their hearts’ content, to the lives of the characters.
- Challenge Challenged: Writers are people who have had a smooth life. They probably breezed through to adulthood and have overcome challenges in life a tad too easily so far. Now, publishing industry is the nut they’re trying to crack. (No pun intended.)
- A Schizophrenic: If a person has one too many personalities vying within, he/she cannot help but become a writer. Writers hear voices inside their heads. They have to give personalities to the voices via the characters in their books or succumb to insanity.
- An Eccentric: Only a person who derives pleasure from constant sleeplessness, uncertainty, self-doubt, and clearing obstacles — big and small — on a day-to-day basis can make a writer.
- An absent-minded professor: Is your friend/spouse/colleague/insert-other-relationship constantly lost inside his/her own world? Does s/he often have a bemused expression on her/his face, and seldom make a good dinner companion? Then, be prepared. S/he is getting ready to spring a book or a story-line on you soon.
I have to say, some of the notions above definitely ring a bell for me. (Of course, I’m not telling you which ones!)
Do you have any other definitions you’d like to add to this list?
How about a creative artist who paints with words ? :) Thats what I see in your posts!
Thank you so much for such a generous compliment! That is a great description. I’m going to use it from now on… :)
Ha! These are great. I do find the challenge…challenging. I have accomplished pretty much every goal I have aspired to in my life except getting an agent with a book deal. And because of the difficult odds, I am all the more determined to do it! (Okay my other goal is to raise my kids to be kind, productive adults but they are still kids so I won’t know for many years. ;)
And I’ve been told all my life that I’m absent-minded. Or an airhead. But an intelligent airhead. :)
These are great!
Thanks, Kelly! How cool is it that you have managed to achieve most of your goals! From what I read, odds are, I’ll be reading a book you authored soon. :)
In a way, I can see all of these as being true–but I agree with Meera–writers have artists’ creative souls. I think they’re nurturers–they feel duty-bound to coax their ideas into fruition.
That’s a lovely way to answer the question I posed, Rowenna! I agree, and obviously I have focused (duh!) on the more tongue-in-cheek side of defitions in this post. The question warrants a more sincere effort at answering it… Thanks for reminding me of it.
AN ATTENTION SEEKER!
Your definition definitely got my attention :). I’m not sure, though, if the majority of writers can be termed as attention seekers. Their writing, on the contrary, seeks attention… At least that’s how I see it…
Someone who deep down inside is shy but comes alive through writing.
Someone who makes an amusing story out of events that others find boring.
Someone who sees straight through to the hearts of others and understands why they do what they do.
Jai
Great definitions, Jai. Thank you!
A Megalomaniac: writers like to be the God/Goddess of their own universes, it makes them feel powerful.
An addict: writers can get so addicted to writing, they just can’t stop. They’re prolific and compulsive and they love it!
And yes, that’s definitely me, in both cases! ;-)
Haha, lovely points of view, Barb! :)
I think I’m the absent minded professor…I always have a hundred things going on at once. :)
I can relate to that one, too :).
I like the control freak one – I love being able to make whatever I want happen in my fictional worlds!
But sometimes the characters get away from you and sketch their own lives, don’t they? It’s so hard to bring them back to your vision when that happens!
These are sooooo quirky and apt. Some of us have clear roles that we fit into perfectly as writers, but some others (ahemmm…the likes of me) have many feathers in one hat. Winter, spring, summer, or fall….four seasons in one day :-)…
Thanks, Sharoon! And I thought I had a busy life! :-)