5 ways that writers are different, and why it’s OK

In my writing life spanning more than 70 published books, I’ve tried to act as though writing were a career like any other. In countless media interviews I’ve  made my work sound like your average 9 to 5 job. Until now. Today I’m coming out of the closet so to speak, and declaring what all writers secretly know – we are different. And that it’s OK.

Here are some of the ways writers are different.

1. We’re scary to our families

Not because we’re eccentric, talk to ourselves and sometimes answer, poke and pry into other lives, although we do all this. But because we pull the bandaids off old wounds, drag skeletons out of closets, and expose family secrets. They’re disguised, of course, and often our families don’t recognise themselves. But we know. And they suspect.

2. Fleeting images brand us

No, I won’t watch the latest horror flick with you. The millisecond image on the promo is already seared on my brain forever. Yes, I know it’s a comedy. My mind treats it differently and the images haunt me. The autopsy scenes from NCIS, Mr Bean bursting his airline sick bag, the face of a friend as she lay dying. These images and countless others like them will haunt me forever. I need to protect myself from some images getting in because they never get out.

Oh yes, we also have multiple personalities

3. I should write but I can’t

The stories are mapped out, the research is done, the deadline looms. And still I can’t write. Imagine I forced you to stand on the crumbling edge of the Grand Canyon. You’d feel what a writer feels when faced with a blank screen. It’s not laziness stopping us from writing. Mostly it’s fear. Of the words not measuring up to those in our minds. Of disappointing readers. Of disappointing us.

4. We exist in our own timeline

We’re not in jammies at 4pm because we’re slobs, although we may be. We’re gestating a story, poem or book. We may have been awake till 2am making notes. Society and our families would rather we were 9-5 people, but the words have their own agenda and they come when they’re ready.

5. We move the world

We record the tiny details of a sunset, a cat’s fur, a child’s laugh, a moment of such agony that we make you cry along with us. We make you love people who never lived, and hate us when we kill them off. We make our pretend worlds so real that you want to live there, and talk about them with your friends on and offline. Sometimes you live in them with us through fan fiction, costume play and conventions. All of that is OK and a great compliment.

Taking you into our worlds is what we live for. We are writers, we’re different and it’s OK.

Valerie

http://www.valerieparv.com

on Twitter @ValerieParv and Facebook

Read some reviews of Birthright at http://www.valerieparv.com/birthright.html