Let's be honest here. When you're a writer, your life looks very different from what is considered "normal". And the cool part is: That's totally ok! In fact, it's not just ok, it's rather encouraged. Being abnormal is your job, and even, dare I say it, your very being. If you were normal, your stories would just be average. Nothing unique or interesting would ever happen, and that makes for a pretty horrible novel.
So, in the name of creativity, embrace your abnormality!
In an effort to display and celebrate what sets writers apart, I've compiled a list of things that I myself have done on my own novelist's journey that could be considered...well...less than sane. I'm going to take a wild guess that these are things other writers have done as well. Enjoy!
1. Doing things with your eyes closed so you know the challenges that would ensue if one of your characters ever suddenly went blind.
2. Not being able to go to bed unless there is a notebook on your nightstand, and using it whenever a novel or blog post idea dominates your thoughts at 12am (like this post idea, for instance).
3. As soon as September hits, you feel the instant need to write a countdown to the first day of NaNoWriMo on your calendar, just so you are constantly aware of how many days you have left to prepare.
4. Being extra critical of every book you read, but adoring them anyway because you know first hand how many tears and sleepless nights the author had to go through just to finish the story.
5. Wanting desperately to go to sleep, but that one character won't stop talking to you, so you literally say the words "shut up shut up shut up" out loud a bunch of times in your best Sherlock impression until you can't hear them anymore.
6. Your iPod is filled with pictures of people you've never met just because they look like how you imagine some of your characters.
7. Creating a dramatic death scene in your bedroom when you're bored, complete with a full collapse on the bed and slowly decreasing raspy breaths, so that the death scene in your book can feel more accurate (and then you "die" by allowing your hand to drop suddenly and seeing how long you can hold your breath).
8. You can fall in love with a certain journal in a bookstore faster than you will ever fall in love with a human person, and once that journal catches your eye it is almost a guarantee that it will be coming home with you, no matter how many unfinished journals you already have.
9. There are boards on your Pinterest page with research on just about everything. Like the level of toxicity of different poisons, well known and common phrases in Latin, the varying ranks of nobility, a list of the different ways a bone could break, a diagram showing how you can tell how much light is left in the day by using your hand, and a life hack post on how to get an extra snack at a vending machine. You know, just in case.
10. Based on the information above, you realize that people might be coming very aware that they shouldn't be afraid of technology, the government, or a zombie apocalypse anymore. They should really be afraid of an uprising of writers.
11. According to you, though, this should just make people want to be friends with writers. For example, if they ever got stranded on an island, you would be the one to know which plants would kill you, how to build a raft that wouldn't sink, and you could spot the human with a hidden agenda from a mile away.
12. Roughly 87.5% of your job is procrastinating by playing solitaire, reading, and scrolling through social media. The small percentage left over is used for rewriting that one problem sentence over and over again until you feel like a lunatic.
13. The first sentence of a book and the title are THE WORST parts of your job, and are probably the source of most of your insomnia and anxiety issues.
14. Several days each week are spent plotting out antagonists and the horrible things they're going to do to your protagonists. And yet people still wonder why you have trust issues and don't feel comfortable going out at night.
15. Talking yourself into doing something that seriously scares you by saying it's research, just in case your character should ever experience it someday (roller coaster, high ropes course, rock climbing, a three day back-country canoe trip, etc...).
16. You find posts like this, and save them just to remind yourself that you aren't the only one who feels so much ridiculous passion for the written word...
17. Most importantly, you know that writing isn't a plan to get rich and famous. Writing is an escape to help you find yourself. The only place where a few minutes of typing can be the difference between questions and answers.
Have you ever done something abnormal or scary for the sake of a novel? What does your writer's process look like?
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