The psychosis begins slowly…harmlessly…seeping into your soul, heart, and mind…infecting everything you do! It’s WRITERITIS. Before you know it, before you’re aware it’s happening, the disease takes over and consumes your life!
All those other activities you enjoyed are squashed by Writeritis!
Those with full-time careers are at even greater risk! Why, you ask? Symptoms, often dormant while job responsibilities consume work hours, fester in your brain until “Quittin’ Time” when the venom of creativity bursts forth. This causes the infected individual to rush to the nearest computer to retch up all the pent-up thoughts, to write with feverish intensity during whatever hours remain of the day.
A few signs YOU may have Writieritis:
1. Listing 10 different synonyms for a word & deliberating over which is best for that sentence.
2. Search & destroy just/that/it/then/adverb missions serve as aerobic exercise.
3. Using vanquish in everyday conversations .( Friends nod knowingly but strangers might give you the look.)
4. Coffee becomes a food group.
5. Zoning out in a middle of an conversation when a a brilliant idea for a scene/novel/character/sentence/climax/beginning/ending/denouement/ pops into your brain.
6. Writing a sentence 20 different ways and not being happy with any of them!
7. Craving whatever food/beverage is in your novel.
8. Dissecting people’s speech for a future character’s speech patterns.
9. Discussing plot over dinner with friends and forgetting who else might be listening. “Should she stab him to death before or after she has sex with the—oh, hi! I’ll have the chicken marsala and…”
10. Excessive nostril flaring when someone calls your writing a “hobby.”
Writeritis is often accompanied by:
11. Adverbphobia: Fear of adverbs. We’ve all heard the warning. Adverbs are clearly, certainly, positively the kiss of death!
12. Conferencosis: Confusion brought on by numerous conflicting statements made by those in the publishing industry.
13. Grammaropia: Inability to see your grammar errors.
14. Verbation : Process of adding-using-including-writing-editing verbs.
15. Prepositionectomy: Obsessive removal of prepositional phrases and/or replacing with the perfect preposition.
What is the cure for Writeritis? There is one known cure but it is more horrible, more tragic, more terrifying, more heartbreaking, and more destructive than the disease. That’s right, Writer’s Block.
Embrace Writeritis, my friends!
Related Links: Rock Your Writing; Click Amazon link to novels.
