You Know You're A Writer If...

You cannot read a book without your red pen in hand.

You troll the bookstores looking for your friends' books so you can rearrange them with the covers facing out.

You troll the bookstores looking for your friends' books so you can stick them, facing out, in front of Valerie Bertinelli's, Paris Hilton's, or Pamela Anderson's books. 

You cannot watch a movie without identifying, out loud (very loud), inciting incident, plot points one and two, climax and dark moment.

You laugh out loud while reading "Twilight".

Every time you step out of the house, people on the street become your potential novel characters.

You travel everywhere with a little notepad and pen.

You excuse yourself in the middle of dinner dates to run to the bathroom and jot down brilliant bits of dialogue that pop into your head. (And bring a napkin with you because you can't fit your notepad into your adorable little bitty purse)

Sometimes when people talk to you, you pretend to listen while you are actually working out a difficult scene from your novel in a thought bubble over his/her head.  (See "dinner date" above)

"Aha!" moments hit you in the middle of the night and wake you up out of dead sleep.

You read out loud to your dog to get confirmation that your prose is working.

You cringe when people use "me" instead of "I" or "I" instead of "me".  Me hate that!

You proofread all text messages before pressing "send".

You proofread all incoming text messages and send them back to recipients after editing.

You cannot read ANYTHING (magazines, letters, thank you notes, dog groomer bills) without becoming appalled at the lack of knowledge people have about spelling and grammar.  Did nobody pay attention in elementary school??

When it's a pretty day outside, your internal voice describes it in beautiful literary prose over and over until it gets the description just right.

You have an internal voice.

Potential book titles run through your head all day long.  And when you get home you "google" those titles to see if they exist yet.

You are obsessed with stalking your mail carrier or hitting "refresh" on your email screen.

You kiss your manuscripts "goodbye" before sending.  (Oh! Oops...am I the only freak who does this??)

Above list written and copyrighted by Eve A. Porinchak.  (You "copyright" everything you write, even though you don't know what exactly "copyright" means.)

Thanks for reading!

Eve