Careful ... They Bite!

Writers are weird. There's no way around it, no other way to say it. We're odd ducks. We prefer the people who live inside our heads to the vast majority of those we've met in the real world. It's a solitary profession, this weaving of ordinary threads into extraordinary tapestries. An isolation that is difficult to explain, even for those who live and interact with us daily.

But help is on the way.

Welcome to the first in a who-knows-how-many-part series on the proper care and maintenance of your typical writer, or scribus domesticus. We'll start with a handy guide on recognizing common behavioral problems. Look for future posts on grooming techniques, feeding requirements, and breeding tips.

Enjoy!

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How to Tell When the Writer in Your Life is Dying Inside at a Creative Roadblock

• Their “To-Be-Read” pile of books no longer resembles a 1:4 scale model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

• The DVR is less than 93% full for the first time in years, leaving nothing but eighteen episodes of Masterpiece Theater they’ll never watch but for some reason cannot delete.

• They’ve become an overnight expert on current events, providing regular updates on Syria’s civil war, Iran’s nuclear threat, and whatever crazy shit Kim Jong-un is up to in North Korea. Your appreciation for their expanded worldview fades when they demand you play “Richard Engel meets Noori the Naughty Freedom Fighter” each night.

• Dinner comes from the oven, not the delivery kid who spends so much time at your place he qualifies as a tax deduction. You're starting to miss him, too.

• They mow your grass, trim your trees, prune your shrubs, and then replace all your fading annuals with perennials. Your apartment complex politely requests that, for liability purposes, they knock it the hell off.

• They want an elliptical machine that you know will become an expensive storage device for dust and cat hair once they resume writing. (But you can’t say that without them accusing you of hoping they die young, probably so you’ll be free to sleep with that tramp from Accounting being unsupportive.)

• The high-octane, double-espresso K-cups no longer disappear faster than fairy blood at a vampire convention. (Random shout-out to Charlaine Harris!).

• You have trouble falling asleep, unaccustomed to them lying beside you any earlier than 3a.m. You long for the click-clack lullaby of their keyboard.

And the number one way to tell when the writer in your life is stuck?

• They write stupid lists for their blog when they ought to be working on their novel.