This is the second collection of my best Tweets under the hashtag #YouKnowYoureAWriterWhen. Click here to catch up on the first part. These were inspired by @KMWeiland. Her blog is an excellent resource for writers looking to become authors.

These come at the special request of Jessica West (@Wes1Jess on Twitter). Be sure to thank her if you get some amusement out of these.

• you can tell when a fellow writer got stuck while you’re reading their work in progress.
• you warp your memories to suit narrative structure.
• you realize you don’t have to name every object in the room, just the ones your character will be using.
• you use the comments feature in your word processor to address the NSA agent who will be scanning your writing
• you try to smuggle in exposition disguised as commentary to lower your word count

• the only reason you’re out & about is because you need to observe a space so you can describe it later.
• you hear about a terrible new teenage craze & think, “There’s a story in this.”
• knowing there’s a typo on your blog, when you’re not at a computer, is like having a popcorn kernel wedged inside a crack in your brain
• you can’t watch a movie without imagining your own B plot.
• you’re always on call in the event that inspiration strikes.

• you encounter something so bizarre in real life, that if you wrote it down, no one would ever believe it.
• you can make yourself sympathize with a character with personality traits you’d despise in real life.
• you can describe a room without resorting to using either sight or sound.
• you name wimpy characters after the bullies who tormented you in high school
• you intentionally write in sequences that would be too expensive to film

• you realize your last chapter was written in the voice of the author you’ve been reading
• you imagine you’re the author of a classic work & get personally offended when someone doesn’t like it
• you’ve pitched your story to the person who cuts your hair
• you write your real world distractions into your story. Suddenly your hero hears a booming subwoofer.
• you know, for certain, that your spellcheck is wrong about something

• you believe you know the secret formula for bringing every ailing film franchise back from the brink of death
• what you have to say can’t always be reduced to a top ten list
• someone tells you about a terrible experience and you say, “Do you mind if I steal that?”
• you’ve fixed the Star Wars prequels in your head. Obi Wan-Padme-Anakin love triangle anyone?
• you hear there’s a typo in your post & you hide in the bathroom at work scanning the text from your phone until you catch it

• you draw the line at too much research & start making educated guesses.
• you get so preoccupied with self promotion that you accidentally write a story about it, and it’s great.
• you eves drop on a first date and think, “I could’ve written that conversation better.”
• you read someone else’s story and think: my protagonist could outwit this protagonist, probably win in a fight too.
• you aspire to write a character that will one day be ripped off as often as Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, or Sherlock Dracula

• you need a thesaurus to find a dumber word for the first one that comes to mind.
• your cat knows the only way to get to pet is to walk across the kejh;wfghljkfewjhkfgwhjgr;ljhkgwewglk;grlkjhgewl
• you get antsy when you’re apart from your work in progress, afraid it’s cheating on you with another writer
• you get the itch to write at the movie theater, at rock concerts, during medical procedures

• you can curb your anxiety by putting it into a three act structure.
• you can write through your stress without always having to write about your stress (note the word “always”)
• you can trick yourself into believing a superstitious element of one of your own stories
• you’ve developed the coordination to eat an entire meal with one hand and type with the other
• you’re slightly relieved to learn that the horrible exaggeration you used could actually happen in real life

• the idea of going analog & writing by candlelight sounds romantic until you realize you type much faster.
• you can justify talking to yourself at the coffee shop by saying, “It’s cool. I’m just punching up some dialogue”
• your solution for a plot hole is to have your characters draw attention to it, a mystery to be solved later
• you say, “Wait, this is just (insert classic fairy tale here) but darker,” halfway through writing your novel.
• you run out of things to say but you say something anyway, & it’s accidentally profound, somehow wiser than you are

• you work really hard to create a list of metaphors around a concept, only to realize that lists don’t read well.
• you meet someone who looks just like one of your characters and you think you broke reality.
• you stare down a blank page & find yourself asking, “Now how the hell do I do this again?”
• you want to start an urban legend & never claim responsibility for it, just put it out there & let people believe it
• you want to wrap up this really cool idea so that you can get cracking on this really cool idea, so that you can…

• your characters can see you through the fourth wall.
• you can make an audience feel sympathy for a character whose beliefs are in direct opposition to your own.
• you replace the line of dialogue you thought your story hinged on with something better.
• you go until the coffee shop lights dim & you pretend not to hear the closing announcement with your headphones on
• even your characters daydream about writing.

• manual labor makes you feel like you’re slacking off.
• you get a clever line & don’t know whether to shoehorn it into your work in progress or something new.
• you can pin point the exact moment a film veered off coarse & how you would’ve corrected it.
• you think “I have no idea where this is going but I need to trick my readers into thinking I knew the entire time”
• you feel like you’re talking smack about reality behind its back.
• your breaks from narrative writing consist of different types of writing.
• you get caught using the wrong tense and rather than admit it say, “That’s because the story is about time travel”