19 Signs You’re Addicted to Writing

 

There should be W.A. meetings.

“Hi, my name is Pinar and I’m addicted to writing”.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to undermine any addictions here. But there are addictions that are not (all) bad. I’m quite fond of my addiction to rock music, movies and yes, writing- the oldest, strongest addiction of them all.

When I named my site, I wasn’t trying to be cute, but merely stating a fact.

I have always been addicted but I didn’t quite own up to it when I was writing the next Spider-Woman (yes, Spider-Woman) cartoon episode in my head.

I also didn’t suspect much when English became my favorite lesson at the age of 12, or that I found myself openly thrilled about “having to” do projects that included a lot of writing (much to the surprise or disdain of my fellow classmates.)

But then it became way too obvious for anyone to ignore. You want to know if you are addicted?

Take a look at the “signs” below and see if any of them rings true for you. And you should probably be trying your hand at a writing-related career if you have answered yes to at least some of these questions.

• You are willingly taking on school projects that involve writing. Plays, stories, essays…You name it. You also find yourself enjoying all exams that require essays.

• You get good at feigning interest in non-writing-related classes while you are just writing the next scene in your script. In your head. In your notebook. On the desk. Wherever.

• You love an audience and you feel over the moon when people genuinely like what you wrote. But you’d not stop writing even if no one read or liked it.

• You shock everyone when you willingly take an elective at university because it requires a thesis, not despite of it.

• When you are alone, you have several voices having conversations in your head. No, you don’t suspect any sort of mental disorder. For one thing, you know they are not real. For second, they are not talking to you. They are talking for you-so that you can finally get scenes written the way you want them to be, or you get to envision new scenes.

• You do find yourself occasionally tuning out of conversations when they get stale, or when your muse decides to show up. In your defense, a lot of people give breaks during conversations to check their messages or update their status or have an obsessive texting match with their boyfriends. You are just doing your bit for the creative world.

• You fall in love with the Bryan Adams song “She’s only happy when she’s dancing” and create  a “She’s only happy when she is writing” version-though I should add that I’m addicted to dancing as well.

• You read a great post/article/novel or see an awesome movie and think “Man, I wish I had written that”.

• You are more impressed with actors if they have also churned out some really cool screenplays.

• You read about a very successful person (at any area) and draw parallels to writing.

• You can take a post about writing and apply it to any other area, or you can apply any area to writing. Like Pippa’s “The CSI Guide to Finding Your Next Killer Idea – A Guide for Bloggers” post on Jon Morrow’s BoostBlogTraffic. Or my “Why Finding the Perfect Freelance Writing Gig is like Finding The One”  on this blog.

• You favorite author tops the list of famous people you’d love to meet.

• You can’t sleep because of all the ideas spinning around in your head.

• So you get up, despite your closing eyelids, and start taking notes. I’m writing these words at 2.30 am. I went to bed at 2.

• You do get incredibly excited about your ideas and share them with people-your imagination and inspiration are just exciting to you as your accomplishments.

• You run 4 blogs, even though you can only keep up with 2,5 of them (see my dating blog’s posting frequency for the half part), while happily writing your assignments and working on your novel.

• You know that even after you turn off your computer after finishing a post late at night and going to bed, you probably won’t fall asleep for an hour or two because you’ll be thinking about other post ideas.

• You just love writing. Especially when you are inspired, and have the freedom to write what you want.

• The more you write about signs you are addicted to writing, more signs keep coming to your mind.

 

 

Are you addicted to writing? Are your symptoms similar to mine? What would you add to the list?

If you liked this post, you can follow this fellow addict @zoeyclark on Twitter.