1) Writers like writing about themselves: it's true. Writing about writers and their tendencies is some sort of fun meta game for writers, which they shamelessly partake in, maybe the way that guitarists like to shred.
2) Writers, whether they like it or not, often interrupt: in my experience, true. Maybe this only happens when I, specifically, talk to writers. Maybe it's a writers-talking-to-writers thing, and writers don't interrupt other non-writers. But many of the writers I've met interrupt. Maybe they're so used to observing that the prospect of using words in the real world overtakes them. Maybe this is just a fluke in my experience. It is counter-intuitive, since you'd think in order to be a good writer you'd be a good listener. Maybe I'm a bad speaker myself, and they spare me the agony of misused words. I'm only saying what I've experienced.
3) Writers are not all like Ernest Hemingway: it's true. I used to go to parties for accepted students expecting to be in good drinking company. I was already pretty loaded by the time I realized no one else was fond of getting drunk and telling outrageous stories. No, most people were sipping their beer and talking politely about course work. Maybe writers these days drink mostly at the keyboard or in private or not at all. I've also realized that many writers I've met are on the reserved side and that maybe musicians are the ones that get loaded and tell outrageous stories. God, probably none of this is true and it just applies to me and my group of friends.
4) Writers aren't as funny as I'd like them to be: also true. I think comedy is a seriously important mode of expression, that comedy has the ability to reveal cultural and universal truths in a way unparalleled by other methods of communication. So it makes me sad when I go to a party where no one is laughing and everyone is very serious and you ask everyone what they write about and they say something about death and war and failing relationships and the like. This is obviously a very personal preference, and I don't mean to undermine death and violence and other unpleasant human truths and tendencies. Oh wait, yes I do.
5) Writers are secretly intensely competitive: I'm going off a vibe more than actual evidence for this one. But anyone who possesses the persistence and self-awareness that it takes to be a writer probably also has, somewhere not too deep down, a somewhat unseemly competitive streak. I know I do. It crows victorious when I hear other writers let it slide that they may have an inkling of competitiveness in them. “Weakling!” the streak says. “I would never admit to that.” and then I take a sip of my beer and nod and smile, saying yes yes so and so is very good I wonder about this and this?
6) Writers have a hard time believing that they're writers, even after success: I think, with the exception of writers like Joyce Carol Oates or Stephen King,* you probably feel like a fraud at some point if you're calling yourself a writer. I don't know why this is. I certainly feel fraudulous and self-important if I label myself "writer." I prefer "student," or "American," or even "twenty-something," most days of the week. I feel like calling yourself a writer is akin to calling yourself a Jedi when you've only had a couple of lessons with Yoda or maybe even just gotten really good at shooting sand creatures on Alderaan. Who knows. Maybe writers give themselves too much and not enough credit, and that's why we're so off balance.
Writers like Beethoven: I'm bullshitting now I don't know I've got to go to work but I love Beethoven and am going to listen to him now.
*Because both of them churn out amazing quantities of work, both living off their work at a relatively early age.
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