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.

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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”

• 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

• 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