Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the weirdest of them all?

tim sherman-chase via flickr creative commons

Writers are a strange bunch. Individually, writers tend to exhibit the personality quirks of a lone wolf terror suspect. They are introverted, often under the influence of mind altering substances (coffee and/or booze), are observed talking to themselves, and have an end game focus.

Writers often congregate in small groups, more accurately named,  cells. These Writer Cells meet and plot bad things- very bad things. The members of these secretive groups devise methods to overthrow governments, infect citizens with exotic, viral diseases, and entrap innocent unbelievers in slave camps. They tend to feed off one another and devise new and increasingly twisted dark plans.

That person with the laptop, the one you notice sitting alone at Starbucks; they aren’t sipping on a cappuccino whilst catching up on email. No, that person, my friends, is the front guard of the Writer’s Terror Network. They are trying out their nefarious plans on you, or worse, stealing your very words and mannerisms for their stories. Once they bring you alive on the page, God only knows what evil they have in store for you.

w10 via flicker creative commons

Once separated from their support networks, writers are easily trapped and captured with a simple lure of book reviews or the whiff of an agent interested in their Whack a Mole Word Art. They breakdown quickly and often. Seasoned interrogators (critics) probe the open wounds of self doubt with one-star reviews and complaints about  story structure.

Careful interaction is a must with these sensitive creative types. Offend them at your own risk. They will write you into their next novel and your character will meet a painful, violent death.

Where One Star Reviewers Go…

The Web browser histories of the captives are chilling. Weapons, dirty bombs, inner city metro maps and Netflix streaming videos of the lost episodes of Manimal. The NSA is performing a linked pattern analysis of bad television and unreadable fiction.

hollywoodreporter.com

Writers expect black helicopters with jackbooted gunmen to swoop down at any moment. Ted “Unabomber” Kazinski, The Zodiac Killer, Son of Sam, – writer, writer, writer. The space between psychopathic crackpot and fiction writer is a slim margin, a unicorn whisper at best. So when you gaze into that mirror, what do you see? And can you explain your browser history when “they” come to take you away to the “farm?”

JCwriting motivator

Among the last few items on my browser history, I swear upon a stack of Stephen King novels, they were all for research are:

• Airport maps
• Temperatures needed for Cryogenic Suspension
• The value of a human kidney on the black market
• Mexican drug cartel smuggling routes
• Counterfeit pharmaceuticals
• Homemade wifi sniffing surveillance drone
• Charlize Theron (research, remember)

So, fellow writers, it’s time to come clean.  What are the last five items in your browser history that you will have to explain to the authorities?  Fess up!