Ten things that make writers mad

Writers are a peculiar breed. Even though we live all over the globe in a variety of different habitats and abodes (and display a surprising range of personality traits) as a collective bunch, writers are often marred by a particular set of idiosyncrasies… like the things that drive us bat shit crazy:

1. Copies, all the copies

Like when you realise mid-way through a major edit that the Google Doc you uploaded last week is NOT THE RIGHT ONE. Because, duh, you emailed yourself a copy last night and you also saved a different version to your USB stick shortly after that. But wait… are you sure that’s the right one??? Which one is it!?

too many cats

2. Scrivener

Because you don’t have it and every other writer has it and they keep telling you how freaking amazing it is and there’s this thing called binder and you should totally ‘get it RIGHT NOW because it’s on sale.’ So you tell them ‘oh my God I know, I really need to buy it!’ And then you never do, but they just won’t let it go.

cat back

3. Handwriting

Because you can’t do it anymore. You’ve been so busy typing that your penmanship is now a messy suroul. Sorry scrawl. But it’s not like you can actually handwrite a book and then make $1 billion USD, right??

cat writing

4. Your cat

Who can forget the time he ninja-jumped onto your keyboard and somehow, miraculously, deleted a huge junk of your manuscript without any chance of recovery? And yes, ctlr+z did not work and that copy you uploaded to Google Docs STILL ISN’T THE RIGHT ONE.

cat keyboard

5. Hello

It’s your cat again. He just ate your manuscript. You know the failsafe copy you printed for emergencies and stashed in a secret, locked cabinet?

cta eating paper

6. Your parents

When they tell everyone ‘you’ll be the next J.K Rowling’ and you’re super upset with them because… you thought you were the next J.K Rowling.

cruickshanks.gif

7. Potatoes. Yes, potatoes

Remember that time you dreamt up the most unusual and unique story in the history of the world?? It was about this guy who goes to Mars, gets left behind, grows some potatoes and then all of his astronaut friends come to the rescue. You were going to call it The Potato Man but… ANDY WEIR WROTE THE SAME DAMN THING SEVEN YEARS AGO AND NOW IT’S A MOVIE AND HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW THAT!?

cat potato.gif

8. Emails

For all those times your heard a familiar ‘ping’ from your phone and you just knew it was from that big time editor you queried 2 years ago declaring their love for your book/poem/six word story. But it was God damn Goodreads again. Apparently The Book Bound Society was about to read P.S I Still Love You.

hugging cat

9. Writing rules

Like, you know, that adverb-rule Stephen King told you about? But did he also remind you that adverbs don’t always end in –ly? Yep, you now have to do another seek and destroy because someone is not ‘very tired’ they are ‘exhausted’. Obviously.

cat exhausted.gif

10. Editing

Um… God speed, good and faithful servant.

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flying cat

81 thoughts

  8. Nothing worse than printing off a copy of something you have written, given to a loved one to proof read, and two weeks later they have only read the first two line, and you question yourself, did they read it and not like it or thought it was rubbish, or have they just not bothered to read more than two lines? After you have spent days writing it, pouring you heart and soul in to the piece in question.

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  13. I use software that programmers use for version control (I use Mercurial on bitbucket, but GIT is probably more common these days) to do my backups. That way I’m always editing the latest version, but can still get to backups if I need to. Unfortunately, I tend to forget to back up often enough—I finally got around to pushing my recent changes to bitbucket and there were 166 files that had been added or changed. That was scary, as the only copy of the changes until I did the push was on my laptop! I’m writing a textbook, so a lot of the files were new figures.

    I don’t find myself editing the wrong document often, but I do often find myself writing a paragraph or a section I’ve already written. (Well, more accurately, I find almost the same paragraph in two different places in the book, written months apart.)

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  15. omg I laughed out loud with numbers one and eight!! And Scrivener… 🤦🏼‍♀️ I’m one of those people who got so tired of hearing about it that I decided to try it out myself and I actually kiiiind of like it… Personally, it could never fully replace Microsoft Word for me, but I definitely see its appeal when it comes to drafting!

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  17. Try mowing the lawn.

    While you’re mowing your quarter acre you draw out the most amazing story your mind has ever come up with. You got this. No worries. Once you finish you’ll go in the house, dust yourself off and write it out. Child’s play.

    You finish mowing. The bride offers lunch. You take her up on it. You eat. Do a little shopping. Enjoy your day. Come home. Shower. Nap. Watch a movie and just before you end your day you realize you had this great story idea that is now….officially…..GONE.

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  18. One thing that makes me mad about writing is I live in a world of non readers.
    No one in my family reads and no one at my job reads.
    I attended some writer meetups but they didn’t appreciate the fact that I write about how residual income gives people financial freedom.
    Writing about money and financial freedom is over a lot of people’s heads.

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  22. I would like to be more a Shana Abé, JK Rowling, Cassie Clare combo, along with many others. Not all of it applies to all of us but I see your point when it comes to editing and writing and the frustrations that follow.

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      1. We’ve all been there…editing what’ve we’ve already edited or editing the wrong document. You put a great spin on the experience and made many grin and laugh. Thanks, Milly.

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  30. Excellent use of cat gifs. I also have problems keeping track of all the versions of a story- cause you don’t want to actually delete any of them of course! And I’ve tried Scrivener but I just don’t have the patience 🙂

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    1. I never like to delete my old copies either, I have so many it’s ridiculous. It’s come in handy a few times though when I’ve deleted a chunk of a story and belatedly decided I wanted it back – all you have to do is go back through an old version! And voila! You’re saved

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  31. J.K. Rowling? I’d be offended, because I don’t think she’s actually that big of a deal. I mean, yes, she’s filthy rich, but that doesn’t mean that she wrote the best thing ever. You can do so much better.

    As for potatoes – totally! I live in the wrong times. Everything points to it.

    I have this fantasy that one day when I will be rich and famous, I will publish a handwritten book and it will be a huge hit.

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  34. Loved this post. 🙂

    Editing is actually my favorite part of story-writing. It means that I’ve actually written a story, and all that’s left is to make it the best it can be.

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  36. I the bejeepers out of chapter for a very long series I’m writing….only to discover its the wrong damn version…ARGH!!!. Now include the file name, date and time when I saved and edit.

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  39. Editing. Aaaaaaallllllll the editing….. And proofreading. And more editing. And more proofreading. And the “how in the &$%( did I not catch that typo in the last 3 proofreads?!” And that means yet another proofread…and editing… 😉

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  42. Good post, though I am surprised that “accidental typos you don’t notice for three drafts only to seem blatantly obvious after you find them” did not make it to the list.

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    1. That shoulda been my number one! Although I’m guessing I lumped that one under editing, but absolutely deserves its own point 😂😂 especially when it’s a typo that makes the sentence completely awkward and weird hahah

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