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Thursday, September 1, 2016

Writer's Insanity

Writer's insanity is a strange and complex frame of mind which leads to a great number of things. It cannot be adequately described in just a few sentences, so today we will be exploring the concept of writer's insanity in a great number of lengthy paragraphs.
In summary, writer's insanity is just what its name suggests. It is a condition that writers become afflicted with when they are truly and deeply immersed in all things resulting to writing. This condition causes the writer to become obsessed with these aspects of writing, and to sometimes appear as though they do not have a firm grasp on reality or sanity. There are many specific symptoms of writer's insanity, just as there are many specific aspects of writing.


One symptom of writer's insanity is that the writer will become an obsessive perfectionist about spelling and grammar. When reading, or when people are talking, the writer will be thinking, "Incorrect grammar. Wrong spelling. Should have used 'its', not 'it's'. 'Lay', not 'laid'. Typos." The writer also finds themselves critiquing sentence structure, word usage, and other aspects of writing. At times, the writer may find themselves doing this even when reading a published story.

Another symptom of writer's insanity is when the writer obsesses over minute details of linguistics. The writer focuses on different dialects, and may incorporate foreign languages into their writing. In extreme cases, the writer will obsess over whether a word or phrase matches the dialect or time period, or make heavy use of dialects and/or languages they know very little about.

Writer's insanity also causes the writer to become extremely fascinated by the way people think and act. They analyze the behavior of their fictional characters, others' fictional characters, themselves, and other people. The writer is interested to know people's motives for what they do, and focus on making sure their characters' actions make sense and are explained properly.

The compulsive need to look up random information is another sign of writer's insanity. It is suddenly important to know about a bird's respiratory system in order to write about dragons, or look up different words and phrases in order to enrich your vocabulary. This may go to such an extreme that the web servers for Dictionary.com are on a first-name basis with you.

People who have writer's insanity tend to daydream often. In fact, sometimes these people live in a world of reveries, and visit reality infrequently. The constant existence inside one's head causes the person to randomly laugh at funny memories, or a humorous piece of dialogue they just invented. Things going on in real life frequently remind them of something in their stories, increasing the likelihood of this random laughter.

After being in one's own fantasy world for long periods of time, writers begin to think like their characters. When in a situation, they imagine how their characters might react: what they would do, what they would say. On occasion, the writer might actually act or speak like their character. Because characters are sometimes so different from the writer, a person with writer's insanity may seem entirely different when they are doing this.

Yet another symptom of writer's insanity is the way they approach writing. They may choose to write about things they know little or nothing about, or in a style they are unfamiliar with. In other words, those who have writer's insanity don't take the easy way out, and often make things more complex than need be. Despite the writer's lack of knowledge, they will demand of themselves that every detail be perfect. This causes other behaviors associated with writer's insanity, such as constant researching, focusing on spelling and grammar, and obsessing over linguistics.

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