Thursday, March 13, 2008

consider yourself warned: the top ten signs of the writing disease

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.—Logan Pearsall Smith

Letters! I believe he dreams in letters!—Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

—“He has got no good red blood in his body,” said Sir James.—“No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass, and it was all semi-colons and parentheses,” said Mrs. Cadwallader.—George Eliot, Middlemarch

I don’t know how you feel about writers, or even how many writers you know. We can be tricky people--we’re susceptible to all kinds of trouble, from mild social awkwardness to major addictions, genius complexes, and chronic poverty. (In which case, we will be coming to your door, asking for bread in exchange for sonnets.)

If this alarms you, you might want to be on the lookout for us. Most writers will try to shield you from the actual event: the commitment of words to paper. And so, I’ve thought about the writers I know, the writers I’ve heard of, and I’ve even analyzed my own--ahem!--harmless preoccupations. What follows are ten warning signs that your friend, roommate, or family member (hereafter called the “subject") may be slipping into writerly tendencies.

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Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 03/13 at 04:54 PM
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