The Mind Of A Writer – REVEALED

The mind of a writer would be a scary place to live in. You may disagree, but we writers have totally different brains from the rest of the world. We spend hours developing characters that may not even be alive in the next five pages and erasing, scribbling and hitting the “backspace” button way too much.

But now, the going ins and the going outs of what happens in the writer’s mind is revealed to you. How was I able to get such top-secret information?

 

Well, for one, I’m a writer, so I know these things. But secondly, I know a lot of other writers and I am very sure that they would agree with what I am about to say.

There are five secrets that I am going to reveal to you about writers and what goes on in our minds. They are all true and either haunt the human writer or give him joy while writing. Either way, here they are.

 

1. Procrastinating & Emotions

I’m putting Procrastinating and Emotions together, because it’s faster and because they do go together when it comes to writing.

Procrastinating

Procrastinating does not mean that all writers are lazy. Sure, there are some writers out there who are, but most are not just plain lazy when it comes to writing. If they were, then there wouldn’t be as many stories in the world as there are, now.

We writers procrastinate because (1), we either get tired of our story and put off writing it, or (2), because we get Writers’ Block, which I will discuss more in depth in a moment. We writers do often procrastinate on purpose, but usually get back onto our writing after our procrastinating is over.

Procrastinating could be pointed back to either Writers’ Block, boredom of your story, or just plain laziness in general. Either way, all writers experience it.

So wait, how do EMOTIONS fit in here?

Well, when writers procrastinate, they usually feel either (1), bored (2), dismal or (3), lazy. Each one has emotions in it, and I explain how they each do in detail below

Boredom

Being bored isn’t an emotion, but rather lack of emotion. When someone is bored of their life or whatever they’ve been doing, they don’t usually know where to go, or what to do. Their mind can’t seem to think of anything else, which thus leads them boredom.

So when a writer is bored, they usually can’t seem to think of what to write next, or they are just tired of what they’ve been writing. Maybe they want to write something exciting but know that they can’t yet, because it wouldn’t fit into the storyline unless they waited a little longer for the story to unfold. This is how writers usually become bored – because they are tired of what they have been writing, and this then usually leads to procrastination.

Dismal

The Oxford Dictionary definition for “dismal” is: “depressing; dreary”, and that’s a great explanation of what it means.

Feeling dismal about something is a part of life, and nobody can escape it. A lot of times, writers will become dismal as a result of something that they have written. Maybe the writer has just killed off a character in their story. Maybe they are about to kill of a character and become dismal just thinking about it.

(You wouldn’t believe how many writers really don’t enjoy killing off their characters…and then there’s a good size amount of those who do enjoy it, too.)

Or, feeling dismal could be because of something that has nothing do with writing, but then has everything to do with it.

For example, say a writer’s father has just died and so this writer feels dismal. This doesn’t seem to affect the writer’s writing one bit at first, until the writer starts to feel depressed about their writing. This can lead to the writer giving up on what they’ve spent hours writing, and maybe even give up on writing altogether.

Feeling dismal is not a safe thing at all.

Laziness

Being lazy can become an emotion if you don’t do anything and your mind starts to wander. If a writer starts to procrastinate in their writing, this can lead to laziness, or the other way around.

Say that a writer stops writing for a while, either because they are tired of what they’ve been writing and want break, or they are bored of their storyline and so just decide to “drop it” for awhile. If a writer doesn’t pick their writing back up, the writer can become lazy towards writing and the story that they worked so hard on is now abandoned for something that seems far greater than writing their story.

Once a writer start to feel lazy towards their story, this can often lead to procrastinating, which links the two together.

Laziness is not a good fit for anyone, especially writers. It can create people who are too lazy to write anything, and if they do write anything, then they’re too lazy to write anything worth reading.

And so that is how Procrastinating and Emotions go together for a writer.

 

2. Writers’ Block – It’s Deadly

As I mentioned above, one reason for writers procrastinating, is because of Writers’ Block. This is the most deadly form of disease that a writer can pick up, and it paralyzes them for up to months, if not years, at a time. I’ve had it, and just about every other writer has it.

Let me explain Writers’ Block to you, though, if you don’t know what it is, or have never experienced it, before.

It begins with you writing. You’re just going about with your day, writing away, when suddenly, you can’t write anymore. Those of you that are unexperienced in this department may argue that we still “can” write, but I assure you, it’s impossible. The disease of Writers’ Block takes over the writer’s entire body and mind and they can’t think of their writing anymore. They desperately try to write another sentence, but all that comes out is letters and words all jumbled together. They close their eyes and think very hard, trying to get ahold of themselves, but to no avail. Writers’ Block has gotten a hold of them.

And when you DO have Writers’ Block, it’s terribly frustrating. You desperately want to write, but nothing will come out of you.

Yeah, that’s what I’m like when I’ve got Writers’ Block.

There are ways to get around Writers’ Block, and that is to never stop writing. If you take a break from writing, then Writers’ Block could hit you when you don’t realize it, and when you go back to write your story, you can’t write anything at all.

We writers that are experienced in writing and have been doing it for awhile, realize the importance of staying away from this deadly disease and try our hardest to not pick it up. We wrap our whole minds around the story that we are writing, and think of nothing else. Because if we start to think of something else and want to drop what we are doing for that “something else”, then that’s usually when Writers’ Block creeps in.

And it’s deadly.

 

3. Search History (and the scary results)

The search history of a writer is a scary thing to view. You may have a writing friend and when you click on their search history, you’re horrified to see what they’ve been searching for – guillotines? Since when was your friend interested in guillotines and wondering if you would feel the pain?

Since your friend became a writer.

If you don’t understand, then listen up:

The stories that writers come up with are all from at least one of the many genres of writing. Here are six of the most popular that I can think of, at the top of my head: Historical Fiction, Dystopian, Mystery, Fiction, Romance and Sci-Fi. Not to mention the dozens of other ones, like Biographies, Autobiographies, Horror and lots more that we don’t need to mention.

But to get down to my point: There are lots of ways to write a story, and a good writer wants their story to make sense. You don’t want a story with a lot of exciting stuff happening in a story if it doesn’t make sense.

Take, for example, if you were writing a story about a boy who’s wrist was fractured in an accident. An inexperienced writer might just guess how long it would take to heal, writing that it only took a week and a half.

However, an experienced writer would research how long it takes for an average wrist fracture to heal (which is four to six weeks, by the way. :D) and then include that in his story.

  Researching for a story makes your story so much more believable.

And that is why we writers have such crazy search histories.

 

4. Why We Kill

     It’s simple, really. When writers don’t like a character that they made up in a dramatic story, then they cane easily kill them off. Other times, the writer dreads the fact and can’t bear that fact that they must kill of their favorite character soon. It’s painful.

     Then why do writers kill of characters?

You may ask.

     Why do they break my heart when my favorite character dies?

     Because it makes you want to read more.

Well, usually. 

     The other reason is because writers want to create emotion in their readers. And what better way is there to create emotion, than to kill the best character in the whole story? The character that is most likely the reader’s favorite character in the whole story?

     And that’s why we writers kill. Please don’t think I’m saying that writers kill people in real life (though there have been some, of course.), but we writers do, at least one time in our life, have to kill off a character. Whether it be the protagonist, the antagonist, or just some random person, one of them will die one way or the other. 

     And there’s no way to stop the writer from committing this crime.

5. Amazing Lines

You know that moment when you read that conversation in a story and you can’t get over how good it is? The writing is amazing and the conversation so realistic, that it’s almost impossible to believe that the writer didn’t actually have that exact conversation with someone else.

Well how do you know that they didn’t?

A lot of times, a writer won’t know what to write, and so what do they do to get inspiration? Hang out with other people.

When a writer spends time with someone besides himself, he gets to conversate with that person, and to see how they act. We writers might watch someone’s every move because it reminds the writer so much of one of their characters.

I’m not trying to scare you away from writers. Just letting you know how we get those great lines.

Plus, if you’re a writer and you haven’t had that “WOW” moment when you step back from what you’ve written and can’t believe how good it is, then take my advice:

Go out somewhere today and listen.

Listen to everything and everyone that you hear. You’ll eventually get a great conversation piece you can fit right into your story.

Trust me. It will be worth the effort.

And thus, a portion of the writer’s mind is revealed.

Cheers!

-Keziah ❤