You Might Be a Novelist If. . .

I'm sure on Facebook you've seen those posts with a title like, "You Might Be A Child of the 80s if....", followed by photos of all the things children of the 80s identified with from neon clothes to Cabbage Patch Kids. I've seen children's books similar to this, too--there's an entire series with titles, such as If You Lived In Colonial Times or If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon, where kids are told what would happen to them if they were a part of this historical period. These have inspired me to write...

You Might Be a Novelist if. . .

• You have several half-finished novels on your hard drive that you'll finish one day when you have time (which is never). You may even have a few unfinished novels, full of run-on sentences and description out the wazoo, that stop at exactly 50,000 words because you were trying to "win" NaNo.
• You have a coffee mug or t-shirt that says something like, "If you make me mad, you could end up murdered in my next novel." By the way, you can't find a coffee cup big enough to hold the amount of coffee you need to write your novel.
• You have Pinterest boards full of beautiful people who are most definitely starring in your screenplay, when your book becomes a movie. 
• You have a blog that you haven't written on since 2009.
• You love office supplies, especially brightly colored post-it notes and neon colored highlighters.
• You talk to yourself; or even worse, you talk to your characters and ask them questions about what they would like to do; or even worse, when talking to your friends and family, you mention your characters as if they were real people. "The other day, Harry said his scar was really hurting. . ."
• You have trouble sleeping because of a) the coffee from your huge coffee cup  b) your characters keeping you awake at night, talking to you  c) your fans won't leave you alone (okay, we can dream about c when we finally fall asleep).
• You have a gym membership that you never use because while everyone else goes to the gym in the morning before work, that is your only uninterrupted time to write your novel. (Can you really be fit and a writer too? No.)
• Your new year's goals always include something like, "I will write ___ pages a day." Or "I will write ___ words a day." And by February 1, you are down to: "I will write every day." And on Feb. 5, "Okay, okay, I will finish a novel in two years."
• You hear yourself complaining about having to actually get dressed and talk to people on the weekends.  
• Your passion is creating amazing characters and interesting plots to thrill your readers and make them beg for more. 

Happy Writing! 

Margo L. Dill is a published author, editor, writing coach, and blogger, living in St. Louis, MO. You can join her Writing a Novel With a Writing Coach here in the WOW! classroom. You can read more about her and her books at http://www.margoldill.com. 

mug photo above by qrevolution on Flickr.com