In the last week, there has been a thread running through one of my writers’ group email in answer to the prompt: You know you’re a writer when . . .

Here are a few of the responses:

  1. You edit your texts and cringe when a mistake creeps by.
  2. You spend more time rewriting (in your head) your book club’s monthly novel than reading it.
  3. Non-writing friends avoid you because they’re afraid of ending up in one of your novels.
  4. You edit your emails multiple times.
  5. If you’ve ever thought “prison might not be so bad as it would finally give me time to get my writing projects done.”
  6. When you ask your friends to lock you in the trunk of a car so you can figure out how you would feel or try to get out.
  7. When you turn your and your friends’ book covers out in a bookstore.
  8. You get a friend to tie you up and leave so you know how long it takes your heroine to get loose.

Writers are a unique group of people whose brains are wired differently from “normal” people. We are always looking at people, situations, experiences, and conversations with the underlying goal of somehow using what we’ve learned in our writing. My family has come to accept that anything they say or do can be used against them in a blog—or even in an excerpt in a novel. Writers are constantly critiquing the writing of others, whether it be a New York Times bestselling author or a text message. (I will admit to a guilty pleasure when I find a typo in the novel of a best-selling author.) Sometimes I find it difficult to read for pleasure because I’m either thinking of how I would have said something differently, or how much I like how the author said something and I want to remember it to use later. (Of course, I never do, and I keep telling myself I should keep a note pad to write down phrases or words that I might like to borrow, but that’s as far as I get.)

Anyway, here is some writer humor that I plagiarized from the internet to brighten your day:

  1. I’m a writer. Anything you say or do may be used in a story.
  2. Writing: somewhere between torture and fun.
  3. A writer’s idea of an outdoor activity is taking your book outside to read.
  4. You know you’re a writer when the thought of someone seeing your search history keeps you awake at night.
  5. Why I write: Because kidnapping people and forcing them to act out your interesting, make-believe worlds is technically illegal.
  6. Writer: let’s see: I’ve set up a book promo website and twitter account, compiled a media list of contacts, created a Facebook fan page, set up a blog tour and a press package . . .Friend: Finished writing the book yet? Writer: Darn, I knew I was forgetting something
  1. I am a writer, which of course is just another way of saying I live in my own strange fantasy world.
  2. I do this for the money, prestige and power. Said no writer ever.
  3. The creative process: Inspiration, work, binge eating, discouraged napping, random internet surfing.
  4. Dear Publisher, I have read your rejection letter. Unfortunately, it is not right for me at this time. The Writer.
  5. How do you irritate a writer? The list is to long too fit hear.
  6. I do my best proofreading after I hit send.
  7. Writer: A peculiar organism capable of transforming caffeine into books.
  8. The voices are back. Excellent!
  9. Letter to publisher: Gentlemen, regarding the rejection slip you sent me. I think there might have been a misunderstanding. What I really wanted was for you to publish my story and send me fifty thousand dollars.