Young Writers Society

You know you're a writer when you start asking yourself if you're a writer.

You know you’re a writer when you’re on a writing website, looking at a thread titled “you know you’re a writer when…”

You know you're a writer when you question your own personality and decide it's too generic.

You know you're a writer when, instead of responding the way you normally would, think long and hard about what would be an interesting way of responding or what your character would do in your situation.

You know you’re a writer when you get a tingly feeling when you see a button on a website that says “create”

You know you’re a writer when all of your ocs are just extensions of your own personality

You know you're a writer when the notes app on your phone is overflowing.

You know you're a writer when your social media feed is unintentionally full of writing tips and writers. And also if you geek out with another person once you find out they love writing as much as you do.

...you get excited about grammar discussions and delight in discovering obscure words.
...you have a habit of eavesdropping on conversations, secretly gathering dialogue gems for your characters.
...you can't help but mentally edit and revise everything you read, including casual text messages.
...you find yourself creating backstories for strangers you pass on the street, imagining their lives in vivid detail.

You know you’re a writer when you have a bunch of notebooks that you never actually use for anything because you’re “saving them”

You know you're a writer when your best ideas come to you in the middle of the night...

The more prepared of us have notebooks and flashlights in easy reach from our beds, just for that purpose.

You know you’re a writer when you’re researching if there’s vaccines for prion diseases to make sure that your half-human-half-deer character is immune to Chronic Wasting Disease because he’s precious and you don’t want anything to happen to him

…and then you realize this is a sci-fi story with advanced technology, so of course there’d be some sort of vaccine or cure.

And then you realize that this character isn’t even from Earth so there probably wouldn’t even be Earth diseases in his home world

And then you realize that you’re the writer, and you’re thinking too much into this because you can just never bring up Chronic Wasting Disease in the first place

You know you're a writer when making essays are easy but boring for you. But you can spend hours writing (or daydreaming) about your OCs

You know you're a writer when your teacher says, "Okay, we're writing short stories in class today..." And you yell "YES!" And do a dance in the middle of the classroom.

You know you're a writer when you force your non-writing friends to collaborate on a novel with you.

You know you're a writer when you constantly narrate your life in your head.

You know you're a writer when you say something and end it with, "That was all in italic, by the way." (I do that so many times.)

You know you’re a writer when you have a bunch of ideas of stories in your head, but do not have the energy to write them all.

You know you're a writer when you're reading a book, and mentally write a review to it.