Who Is a Writer?

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?

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