So you’re sitting there, thinking you want to be a writer. Thinking that the only thing you need is time and talent, right? Well, you’re wrong. To be a writer, you need to think like a writer. You need to fully embrace being a writer. You need to complain about being a writer.  You need to be smug about being a writer. You need to be embarrassed about being a writer.

Okay?

Okay.

Now, you are probably sitting there thinking ‘THIS GUIDE IS STUPID, YOU HAVE GIVEN ME NO HELP SO FAR’, but I am getting to it, so calm down.  The biggest key to being a writer is choosing your writer personality. This is very important: YOU CANNOT BE A WRITER WITHOUT A WRITER PERSONALITY. And I’m going to help you figure out which one you are.

There are four  very distinct personality catergories, and it is usually very easy to figure out which one you are. Are you ready?

 I AM THE GREATEST WRITER THAT EVER LIVED.

 

Personality one, or the ‘Ginsburg Personality’ as it is sometimes known, is where you have no doubts about your writing ability. If your words were paint, and your computer screen was a canvas, you’d be fucking Picasso, except, you know, not so mainstream. Because if anyone doesn’t understand your work, that means they’re mainstream. If anyone hates your work, that means they don’t understand it, and are therefore probably mainstream. And if anyone loves your work, they’re right, even though they don’t truly understand it because they are so mainstream. You are the greatest writer that ever lived. And no one, not friends, family, teachers, agents or therapists will convince you otherwise. What do they know? They’re so mainstream.

 I AM THE WORST WRITER IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Personality two, is where you are plunged into despair every time you type a word, even one as benign as ‘the’. Why did you put it there? You are so terrible. And even though you forced everyone to read your terrible work, which makes you feel like a suckling pig on the great nipple of society, you know deep, deep down that there is no point to what you do, or say, or write. Why you are writing in the first place baffles everyone around you, who cannot stand your pathetic, whiney, needy personality. They ask “Why bother writing then?” or they’ll say “Please leave me alone” and “I HATE YOU SO, SO MUCH” and still you write, your useless, empty words.

I AM THE WORST WRITER IN THE ENTIRE WORLD (JOKES, I AM THE GREATEST WRITER THAT EVER LIVED)

Most people choose personality three. You must maintain a faux humble exterior, only sometimes letting it break when someone gives you a well-deserved compliment and then you will flush, and look smug, and nod your head in a way where they think you are being shy, but you’re actually holding back the words “Yeah, I know”.

Not a writer, but guilty all the same. Probably could be a writer if she even halfway wanted to be.

You will sometimes bad mouth your own precious words to hear people contradict you. “No, that story was pretty good” they’ll say, which will annoy you, because what they should have said was “That story blew my fucking mind and now I am ruined for all literature”, so you try bad mouthing it to your mother, who always gives you the recognition you need, even though she doesn’t really understand your work, because mums are so mainstream.

I AM THE TALENTED AND HUMBLE WRITER

You are not only really, really talented, but you do not focus time and energy thinking about this fact. There are so many things in the world to worry about. Poverty. War. How to solve a Rubix cube.  You just write your magical words, and people read them and publish them and talk about how great you are, but you pay them no mind. You just humbly thank them, and go back to chopping wood, because it’s far more environmentally friendly to have a wood burning stove than a gas heater.

So now you have your writer personalities to choose from! Be warned though, personality four doesn’t actually exist. It’s completely fictional. No writer is humble AND talented, you big Silly! I just put it in the article as a joke.  And yeah, I know exactly what you’re thinking: God. Jokes. So mainstream.