12 Things Writers Wish You’d Stop Assuming

Please stop the nonsense.

1. Writers are only here to publish the stories people want to read, exactly the way they want them told.

2. Writers don’t care if you say mean things about/to them.

3. Writers have more free time than everyone else.

4. Writers don’t have “real” jobs.

5. All writers want to get a book published.

6. Anyone can be a professional writer as long as they have a good idea.

7. Writers only want to talk about writing.

8. Writing is easy.

9. If you tell a writer an interesting story, they’ll definitely want to write about it.

10. Most writers are only interested in getting “clicks.”

11. Writers aren’t interested in hearing your story ideas. (We are! But you should write what you say you’re going to write! And we’re not gonna do it for you!)

12. It’s too late/too hard/too pointless to start writing now. (DO IT. DO IT NOW!)


Meg is the creator of Novelty Revisions, dedicated to helping writers put their ideas into words. She is a staff writer with The Cheat Sheet, a freelance editor and writer, and a 10-time NaNoWriMo winner. Follow Meg on Twitter for tweets about writing, food and nerdy things.


Help Novelty Revisions become a more valuable resource for aspiring writers.  Join us on Patreon.

6 thoughts on “12 Things Writers Wish You’d Stop Assuming

  1. To the point, short and sweet. I am not a writer yet; maybe never, I move words to make a thought. I am very positive, and I think no different. If I find some talent, I will pocket it and take it home to exercise my word scramble and try to assemble some great story out of it all. Will I make it, probably not, too old, but many greats were in their elder mindset or had gone on into the other life before someone read them and said hey this is good. I am called a Jabberwocky by many, that is ok, I am me, myself, and I. Write it, rewrite it, and have fun, it is your story blab about it someone somewhere will hear you.

    1. All of this! :) Go on and write what you want, or not, that’s up to you – but if you’re going to have fun doing it and it makes you happy, it’s worth it, whether the world appreciates it or not.

  2. Great post, you’re so right. My main one is, as soon as I say that I’m writing a book, everybody says “why don’t you just get it published?” As if I’m not working hard on my edits, and my synopsis and my research, and as if it’s something easy that becomes possible as soon as the book is written. Haha! Mostly I think people mean well, but you highlighted some real annoying comments here. x

Compose your words of wisdom

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s