If you’re a writer, you already know where I’m going with this…

• No sleep. You wonder if you ever fully sleep what with all those moments of popping out of to write down an idea. Or how about the nights where you sit down for an hour and then look up at the clock to see you’ve written for four? Maybe you’re a daytime writer — you rare breed — and you keep sleeping in small, weird nap times instead.

• Your skin is…pale white and ice cold. Yes, that is a Twilight vamp quote. Wrong creature, huh? But the same rule applies. You’re a writer, lucky to spend time in the sun because you sit for hours in a dim room by the sickly light of a computer screen. Think of Tom Hanks in Joe Versus the Volcano. The lack of movement makes your extremities quite chilly. Your fingers might even get numb.

• Things seem to be falling apart. But instead of your body parts falling off in diseased ways, it’s your house that suffers. Your laundry is tall enough to dance with you and you just had to use a wine glass to drink juice in the morning. (No, never happened to me. Why do you ask?? )

• You’ll eat almost anything when you manage to eat at all. There are times where you’re so busy that you forget to eat. Then there are other times where you have to consume whatever you find. And it’s usually something raw or that takes little cook time because dammit you have to get back to your WIP and nothing should stop you! *You then grab all snack foods and hoard them at your desk, god forbid you get hungry again.*

• Drive and determination. Just like zombies have an unquenchable hunger for brains and flesh, writers have a similar obsessive mindset. Instead of thinking BRAINSBRAINSBRAINS, writers fixate on their book. We think about our story and characters ALL THE TIME until we get it out on paper. In the shower or at the movies? Our minds are stuck on one thing.
• Disheveled look. It only makes sense that a lack of sleep, activity and housework will cause a writer to look quite slovenly at times. A wrinkled shirt here and a missing sock there, it’s a good think you always know where your laptop cord happens to be…
• Paranoia. I don’t know if zombies are truly paranoid, but they sure do act like it! They’re jumpy, rigid, and they’ll attack whatever they encounter. Writers are paranoid of many things. What do you mean my story idea has already been done? Did that agent just say that the industry is no longer looking for books about rabid bunnies with an overbite and social anxiety? Crap! Now what do I write? (Can you tell I’m tired? It’s late, moving on.)

• Loners. Do you ever see zombies just chillin’? Having a beer while chatting about the old days as humans? Noooo…because zombies are loners and so are writers. The life of a writer is a pretty solitary one, mixed in with friends and writing partners reading your stuff, but even then it’s mostly done via the internet. Who needs friends when you have so many people in your stories trying to talk to you??

What other ways are writers like zombies? I ask this as it approaches 1:30 am and my eyes are gluing themselves to my contacts. I think my zombie night is taking full effect. Time for sleep. If I can.

Song of the day: You knew it was coming…The Cranberries – Zombie