You see a person huddled in the corner of the room, clutching their laptop and coffee mug for dear life, eyes flicking anxiously back and forth to watch the people go by. Food stains bathe the clothes that you've noticed they've worn for the third day in a row now, and they hiss dramatically whenever a little bit of sunlight slips through a crack in the blinds.

That, my friends, is a fiction writer—a whole other species of "human."

In a lovely article on Thought Catalog, we are compared to sharing neurological similarities to the mentally ill; unsurprising, considering fiction writers spend all of their time trapped in their own heads. You can find the article here: https://thoughtcatalog.com/cody-delistraty/2014/03/the-neurological-similarities-between-successful-writers-and-the-mentally-ill/

You see a collection of notebooks and pens, we see countless worlds waiting to be created and the tools to create them. I have a pen from nearly every place that I've been to, no joke. And yes, we do have that favorite pen that we don't want to use in fear of it running out of ink.

You see us staring intently at you, we see the features of a character. Or we're listening for interesting dialogue. Of course, we eavesdrop, and when you walk away before we can hear the ending to what happened with Joe-Somebody, we're so invested and feel as if we've lost a piece of valuable information.

If you're (un)fortunate enough to live with one, you know they either wake up really early or don't go to bed until the sun rises.

We're liars. There's no cutting around it. We're liars and we take pride in a good lie because it means we're doing our job right.

We also happen to be selfish. To get into the writing market, a lot of writers are so focused on what they think others would like to read. What even better writers do is toss what everyone else wants to the side, because what other people want doesn't matter. A passionate writer will write for themselves, no matter how long it takes to get published.