3 Essential Personalities of a Writer

"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand."

― George Orwell

A writer's most important task is to sit on their typewriter or a computer and bleed into the page. Writing is similar to a trance state where only the writer lives and has God's power to decide the fate of the characters in the world they have created.

Most writers never want to leave this trance and enter the real world to make their work available to people. I am not ashamed to say that I am one of them. However, there are two other aspects of being a writer that requires attention to become a better writer.

Whenever a writer is writing a book or an article, all three personalities have to shine through to make the work a success. Gradually, every writer either figures out all three personalities or learns with experience. In this post, I talk about them. Without further ado, let's get started.

Personality #1: The Creative Genius

This is the best-known and appreciated aspect of being a writer. This personality of the writer only wants to write and let the words flow on the paper. They don't care about anything but taking out the story in their head out on paper to make it tangible before it slips away in the lost realms of the mind like stars in the vast space.

They don't think and care about what will happen after they are done making their imagination a reality, at least on paper.

Personality #2: The Self-Editor

This personality of a writer is somewhat underappreciated. The creative genius has done marvelous work by realizing the extraordinary visions in their head. However, the work needs to be presentable before anyone bats an eye on it.

The work of the self-editor is to remove the dirt of the fruit they bore because asking anyone to take a bite of it. The self-editor and the creative genius don't know if the fruit is spoiled or edible on the inside. This is for the biter to bite and decide.

As a decent host, you won't give a dirty piece of fruit to your guest, then why would you provide messy writing to your readers. There will always be some bias when it comes to self-editing, but at least you have tried your best to make it as presentable as you can-professional editors can look at your cleaned fruit and tell if it is spoiled or edible. Let them do their work but only after doing yours.

Personality #3: The Self-Agent

This personality is the most dreaded by the writers because it almost doesn't involve letting the creative juices flow within the writer's mind. In self-editing, when going through your work again, there might be chances for the creative genius to shine, but the chances are slim to none in being an own agent.

Now that the fruit is ripe and the dirt is removed, the fruit needs to reach a grocer who can decide if the fruit is worth receiving and then can be sold later to potential readers. This will not happen automatically out of thin air. The grocer needs to be contacted, a sample of the fruits must be shown before they agree to put it on the shelf with their other products.

The creative genius personality is the most important because the other two personalities of a writer can come into the picture only after the work of creative genius is done.

A writer can't think that their work is done after they are done writing. The seed that they planted is worth nothing if the cleaned fruit is not presented to a grocer who can sell the fruit to all the fruit-eaters of the world.

My approach to the three personalities has been like a roller coaster. When I started writing my book, sometimes I used to go back and edit parts and found myself stuck in a scene for long durations. However, honing my plan a little better and allowing the three personalities to exist almost mutually exclusively provided me with sanity and furthered my process of finishing the book.

The writing and going back to edit lasted till I had written 20% of my book, but then onwards, I asked my self-editor to sleep and not wake up until the creator's work was done. This allowed me to finish the rest of 80% of my book in less than four months.

I woke up the self-editor after this. The self-editor has been at work for a while now; the creative person is napping to wake up in between and assist the editor. It is almost time to call the self-agent and ask the other two personalities to take a well-earned break. I am in my last round of self-editing, and then I will start contacting publication houses or potential agents to make my work accessible to the world.

Thank you for reading.