10 Signs You're a Writer

1. You love people-watching.

People-watching is an incredible source of inspiration. Whether it's on your daily metro ride, on the sidewalk of a bustling metropolis, or in a local market in a small town, you love taking your place on a bench and observing how people behave, talk, and relate to one another.

Where is this large group of people coming from, and why do they look so tense? What is that couple bickering about? Why is he dressed in a heavy coat in the middle of a sweltering summer?

All of these potentialities and questions make for excellent fodder for your own writing.

2. You have a specific time of day when you feel most creative.

Maybe you're a classic early bird or night owl. Or maybe consistently at 5:45 PM every day you feel a sudden surge of creativity.

There are particular times of the day that seem to fill you with more clarity and focus in your work. It's an unexplainable phenomenon, but when you find yourself in the perfect minute of the perfect hour of the perfect time of day, it's like reaching a bliss point when it suddenly becomes so obvious how to advance the plot of your story, or how to write that closing. When it's that right time of day, you're in the zone and the right words just seem to flow out of you without hesitation.

3. Two Words: Coffee. Tea.

Writing requires that you sit for long stretches of time. How is one to do that without a nice drink to keep them hydrated and alert? Perhaps it's coffee or tea, or maybe it's an energy drink or fruit smoothie. We all have our particular favourites. When we flip open our laptops or take out our foolscap and pen, and also have our drink next to us, it's like an instant breath of fresh air and the signal that it's time to get down to work.

4. You get excited about tiny details.

You love the way that light dances through the windowpane in the corner store in that dingy part of town. You can't help but notice the curving wrinkles in the mannequin's pale yellow skirt. The fact that he looked so deeply into your eyes, but looked away so quickly had you stirring, for days on end, with reasons why that might have been.

It's the tiny details put together that create each particular individual's conception of the world. You actively seek obscure points for observation. Sure, sometimes this makes you seem dazed and unfocused, but it's really quite the opposite. You're highly attuned to the more overlooked components of an object, event, or day. Through your writing, you're given space to share that sensitive view with your readers.

5. Memos on Your Phone of Unfinished Ideas

Ideas. All the time!

Your mind is an endless swirl of unexplored possibilities, not only for your personal life, but for your writing.

You think up a brilliant one-liner and you must write it down in your memo app before you forget it. Or you think of the most astute description for a character who you want to introduce into your crime fiction? Memo app. Reading a story that resonates with you to your very core? Have to save that one particularly powerful paragraph in your memo app. Out for a drink with a friend, and they say something that is just so breathtakingly poetic? Sorry, just have to pull out the memo app for a sec.

If your novels-to-be could reach the same word count as in your phone's memo app, you'd have published thousands of titles by now.

6. Long Lulls of Writer's Block, With Interspersed Bursts of Inspiration.

It may seem romantic to live the life of a writer, but a lot of the time you feel like you're simply in a dead zone. What's going on in your mind? Nothing. Or more accurately, anything besides actually writing.

During writer's block, you may be prone to:

• Doing copious rounds of laundry
• Repeatedly closing and opening your laptop
• Calling a friend and gossiping for five hours
• Napping, waking up, and wondering what day it is
• Reheating your coffee an excessive number of times
• Spiralling down the rabbit hole into the weird side of YouTube
• Deciding that now is the time to adopt that cat from the animal shelter
• Holding your head in your hands in distress

7. 'I wish I could just see the world like (insert your favourite author).'

Writers read. You probably have that one author, or a couple of authors, whose name(s) provoke(s) within you genuine reverence.

Oh my god. Someone mentioned F. Scott Fitzgerald at this party? I need to talk to them, right now. I wonder if they're as big of a nerd as I am over Fitzgerald. I wonder what they thought about his essay "The Crack-Up," and whether they think his relationship to Zelda was the inspiration behind his depressive episode and brilliant writing in that piece?

Whoever it is that is your favourite author, you read and re-read their works constantly, and that author's worldview, whether it be a contemporary one or from centuries ago, largely informs your own. And largely informs your writing, too. Okay, so time travel doesn't exist (yet), but it's so exciting to you to realize that through writing, ideas from long ago have the power to engage with writers in the present day.

8. Self-publishing a Book and Watching Revenue Trickle in at Slower Than a Snail's Pace (If at All!)

Anyone's who's done the work and has self-published knows that writing a book that you believe in is one thing, but market reception is another. So, you poured your heart and soul into the last novel you wrote? Congrats! Amazon says that you've made a total revenue of $2.50 over six months.

It can feel disheartening and like all of your effort is severely undervalued. And your effort will likely be undervalued. Readers don't know, or often do not care about, the blood, sweat, and tears behind the final product. It's the hard truth.

But writers have been warned about the challenges of promoting their work from their very beginning declaration of "I want to be a writer!" The trick is to keep going, and to remember why you chose to pursue a life as a writer in the first place. Also, if you can, hiring someone who is skilled in marketing can truly help your work be seen by the right eyes.

9. The Fear of Telling Non-writers About Your Work

You care so much about your work that it can be nerve-wracking to share with others, especially those who do not consider writing to be one of their own passions.

You're worried that they will judge your ideas as unworthy of their attention, or that they will be confused by the premise of a story. Plus, your work might draw from very personal elements of your life, and revealing your writing is like revealing a vulnerable side of yourself.

But, when you do find those special people in your life who you know will be supportive and constructive to your writing, that fear begins to melt away. You start to genuinely enjoy bouncing ideas off of those people, and sharing with them the many particularities of the writers' process.

10. The Unrivalled Joy of Crafting Pieces That Share Your Vision of Reality

There is nothing like putting words into the perfect order to convey your message. You believe that writing allows you to fulfill your soul's desire to mold your understanding of the world into an art form.

When you build a powerful piece, you know that it has the potential to completely alter someone else's perspective, as well. It is so magnificent to think that an idea that once was only rocking around in your own mind may be put as ink to paper, and create a thought revolution among others.