#YouKnowYoureAWriterWhen Part 6

This is the sixth 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.

Mercy

  • You’ve done so much research that you call out other stories for being inaccurate
  • you decide to refine a parody into a unique piece of art
  • You watch what people do before they speak to better frame your dialogue
  • You prune your flowery prose and leave the weeds
  • Your screen didn’t seem bright when you started in the morning

Keyboard

  • You’re always looking for ways to see yourself in 3rd person omniscient
  • You hit a brick wall every time you have to name a new character
  • You wait too long to edit and find your story covered in overgrowth
  • You show mercy to your darlings, you may have a use for them later
  • You have redundant backups

Monochrome

  • You don’t forget your nightmares, you stock up on them
  • You put the skeletons in your closet out on display
  • Daydreams are your day job
  • You can daydream at night
  • You know the fall is nature giving you an excuse to stay in and hone your craft

Labor

  • Your daydreams take over your waking life
  • Halloween comes all year round
  • You see Halloween as a celebration of good storytelling
  • You can type without editing along the way
  • you can’t simply tell a therapist what’s on your mind, you have to tell them a story

Landmarks

  • your shift doesn’t end at sunset
  • You can convince people that a house you know nothing about is haunted
  • You let your characters go behind the scenes, just to freak them out
  • You can turn rattling pipes into your readers’ worst nightmare
  • You try to shoehorn your problems into your protagonist’s life

Urban Legend

  • you wish you had a panic room, just for when the world get’s too noisy
  • You think you can reinvent the medicine cabinet jump scare
  • The motivation of the ghost behind the shower curtain matters to you
  • You have to write your ideas down before they turn into pumpkins
  • You wish you had a Thesaurus for day to day conversations

Skill Set

  • You find new ideas growing on top of old ones
  • You hear lyrics over instrumental songs
  • You’re always looking for fresh ways to describe a menacing grin
  • You don’t hunt ghosts. You put them there
  • your dictation software screws up and you prefer the mistake

Overgrowth

  • You discover that something you thought you’d made up has a basis in reality
  • You’ve struggled with the idea of inserting yourself into the story just to explain what’s going on
  • You feel like you’re cheating on all your other media
  • you search for new ways to describe looking disheveled only to walk past yourself in the mirror & find an answer
  • the prose pour out of you, but you find yourself stricken with “Twitter Block”

Editing

  • you put your own private peculiarities into your character & someone compliments you on writing a believable freak
  • you keep asking yourself, “How did I do this yesterday?”
  • you aspire to write something that people refer to in hushed whispers like the Necronomicon
  • half way through your work in progress you decide the best way to get rid of cellphones is to make your story a period piece
  • you come up with such a good title there’s no way your story could live up to it

Turn into a Pumpkin

  • you try to write your way out of writers’ block by writing about writers’ block
  • you go decades without upgrading your computer
  • your personal space broadens or shrinks depending on how comfortable you are with your story
  • you can write about writers’ block with authority

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