Meg Dowell Writes

1 Put off writing until the last possible second because that BuzzFeed quiz is obviously more important (yep).

2. “Accidentally” editing instead of writing because words are hard fixing simple mistakes makes you feel good.

3. Tweet about their works-in-progress (WIPs) as if everyone else knows what they’re talking about (they haven’t read the book!)

4. Crying because your fictional people don’t deserve what you’re about to put them through!

5. For nonfiction writers: Doing whatever it takes to hit that minimum word count. Whatever. It. Takes.

6. Spelling literally every word wrong. Like did you ever actually learn words??

7. Laughing at your own jokes because honestly if they’re funny to you someone else will laugh right? Right….?

8. Just letting your characters take over your story and do whatever they want, even if you’ll delete it all later.

9. Spelling the same name four different ways on the same page. (It’s Levine, not Lavine, Levene, or Livine.)

10. Accidentally publishing/sending things that aren’t ready to be published/sent. OOPS?

11. Briefly considering just giving it all up and living like a normal human.

12. And continuing to write anyway because you’ve already gone this far, you might as well just wander further into the madness.

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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.

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