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The Writer


Writer: the one who sits in the back at social events. The one who is always accompanied by a notebook, a book, headphones, or some other gateway to escape reality. The one who is the most detached from society and yet always knows.


Nothing goes unnoticed by you (unless of course you've reached the literature zone, in which case your friends would have better luck trying to break Sherlock Holmes out of his mind palace). You see everything, filing it away in the form of elegantly worded scenery. You hear everything, and your friends are often faced with deja vu as they read your dialogue.


And you are a fly on the wall, the master of appearing invisible. Your ability to hide behind a book or exist in silence (in public anyway) has given people a false sense of security. They speak openly in front of you, not realizing that they've most likely just helped you break past your most recent case of writer's block.


You're everybody's listening ear (because let's face it, your pen speaks better than your mouth ever will) and your friends have no idea how hard it is to keep their problems 'between you and me' and not 'between you, me, and the manuscript.'


But they don't know you. They don't know who you are, they don't know what you are. The quiet, solemn, black-garbed writer goes home and has a conversation with the cat (who is named Ahab...and not after the fun one with the ship).


The scary writer with the piercing gaze of death closes herself safely in her house and promptly collapses on the floor and rolls all the way to her room just 'cause.


Writers are bipolar.


The clock strikes ten and all of a sudden everything is funny. You can't stop laughing and by now the cat has called the police.


You have a ton of energy so you sit down to write because that seems like a good idea (it's not). After a few hours you give yourself a pat on the back, proud of your progress, and allow yourself to get distracted by Pinterest.


Morning comes and you slowly sit up in horror. You know you wrote last night, but you can't remember what. All you know is that you had a weird dream about clocks and you vaguely remember waking up at three in the morning and researching something.


You reach for your phone and, sure enough:



Horrified by your obviously slipping grasp on sanity, you lunge for your computer to see what you wrote last night.


It's bad.


It's worse than you remember.


There's a new character who's only line is "swag" no matter the situation (which is weird because you've never said the word swag in your life), your main character yelled at her mom and ran away from home, and there's a really cheesy death scene (that you definitely cried over while writing) for swag-guy who got hit on the head with a hub cap in a dramatic grapple with a thug and was killed.


You delete all of it. You promise yourself you'll never write after 10pm again.


Not only are writers bipolar and a little unhinged, they are also somewhat shady in a completely geeky way. (The FBI didn't think it was cute, but that's beside the point)


Someone asks to borrow your laptop and you thoughtlessly gesture to the fifteen-year-old, thirty-pound hunk of junk that's sitting on your desk. Your friend sits himself down and boots it up, and all the while you're lost in your own world, writing about a talking teacup and her friend the king of some made-up country.


The laptop has no password - it's not like your cat is going to try to steal it to binge Netflix.


Everything is quiet for a while and you kind of forget your friend ever existed. All that matters is figuring out how this king could inconspicuously take a teacup horse riding.


But then your friend throws a wadded-up piece of paper at you (which is actually your original idea to write a book about a king and a gravy boat) and you look up, your vintage scimitar (don't ask) drawn to bring justice to the misbegotten soul who disturbed you.


It's just your friend. He turns the laptop so you can see the screen and in his other hand he holds his phone, 911 dialed and his thumb hovering over the 'call' button.


You don't understand why he looks so disturbed until you focus on the screen. And, oh yeah, how could you forget that you left some very questionable tabs open?


'Methods of execution in Minnesota.'


'How to build a bomb with household items.'


'How quickly does a stab victim bleed out?'


'Lying on a polygraph - how to trick the machine.'


'Standard life insurance rates.'


You freeze. You look like a murderer and Google is clearly aiding and abetting. You meet your friend's eyes and fortunately he looks more disgusted than worried.


He puts the phone down and utters those four words you've heard so many times in your life:


"What's wrong with you?"


You laugh nervously and pull the laptop from his grasp. "I'm a writer," you tell him, but he already knows. He just doesn't know why.


You're just glad he didn't ask to use your phone.


When this happens in a person's life, their status as a writer is pretty much made official. One day you'll realize you may just be the weirdest person in your friend group.


You're right, of course. Being a writer changes you.


You know the most random things, like how to pick locks (theoretically), the life span of a black mamba, CPR (though, ironically, you wouldn't bet your life on the success of a real-life attempt) and more Greek mythology than Percy Jackson.


It takes a while for you to figure out that you should probably keep your knowledgeable comments to yourself when your friends are talking, because when you don't, they look at you like they're not sure what species you are.


It doesn't help that you don't really know either.


You started wondering about that when you decided to Google 'I'm a writer' between searches to get the NSA off your back.


"Many people hear voices when no-one is there. Some of them are called 'mad' and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called 'writers' and they do pretty much the same thing." - Ray Bradbury

Being a writer may just be the most beneficial (if criminally enabling) hobby in the world. You know how to hack into private WiFi, you know the least damaging place to get shot and you know where to shoot someone if you want them dead (among other methods).


You know over forty species of dinosaur by sight, you've picked up enough Korean to be almost-conversational, and if someone's miraculously (or not) demon-possessed, you can help.


As a writer, you know how to lie, spot a liar, communicate through ASL, Morse code, or Navajo, and how to concoct a fast-acting, short-term paralysis agent for when your little brother just won't stop talking. You've taken automotive classes at the local college because you want to write a scene about fixing a car.


And yet, for all the time you spend on the internet, all of these marketable skills only get about two sentences' worth of screen time in your actual novel.


Turns out, it's really tiring to explain in detail how to fix the engine of a WWII jeep, but you can't unlearn it so if someone asks you to explain the part where you just wrote 'eventually they got it working', you'll be ready.


"As a writer, you try to listen to what others aren't saying...and write about the silence." - N. R. Hart

Realistically, the books you write may be second-rate not-bestsellers for all of eternity, but your interests have expanded on a worrying level and you're smarter than most of your friends. Unless your friends are writers.


You're smarter than the cat, at least.


And you're smart enough to put labels on your baked goods so your friends can knowingly choose between the edible and inedible cupcakes.


"Writing is something you do alone. It's a profession for introverts who wanna tell you a story but don't wanna make eye contact while telling it." - John Green


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