
1. Grow up a little weird, maybe in a devout Mormon household.
2. Have parents who subvert religious indoctrination by imposing no restrictions whatsoever on the kind of books you check out of the library.
3. Read The Thorn Birds when you are thirteen, understand little, but enough to develop a lifelong appreciation for anything lurid.
4. Spend 4-5 years in your room listening to 90's alt-rock.
5. Graduate high school with honours because your worth is defined by academic success.
6. Complete a post-secondary education because same.
7. Receive your credential. Do the thing. Realize that thing isn't at all what you want to do. Go back to your part-time job in an artisanal bakery. Congrats, you have failed at being an adult.
8. Recreational drugs.
9. Meet the man you will eventually hitch your wagon to.
10. Do less drugs...do no drugs...drugs are stupid, why did you do all those drugs?
11. Experience a five year interval of relative normality. Marriage, mortgage, larvae.
12. Become acutely aware that you don't fit in with the other moms. Congrats, you've failed at normal.
13. Read Twilight for some reason.
14. With haughty disgust, claim that you can do better.
15. Write a fucking terrible novel.
16. Write more. Take classes. Drink wine. Meet other writers. These are your people, and just like you, they are exhausting and adorable.
17. Sell a few stories. Make a little money.
18. It's not enough money. You have larvae to feed, and you're out of wine.
19. Get a job in a bookstore, and know that you are living a cliché comparable to that of actor-slash-waiter.
20. Blog on a sporadic basis. Try doing it in list form because you heard somewhere that people like lists. The list is too long. You have no idea what you're doing. Congrats, you're a writer.
2. Have parents who subvert religious indoctrination by imposing no restrictions whatsoever on the kind of books you check out of the library.
3. Read The Thorn Birds when you are thirteen, understand little, but enough to develop a lifelong appreciation for anything lurid.
4. Spend 4-5 years in your room listening to 90's alt-rock.
5. Graduate high school with honours because your worth is defined by academic success.
6. Complete a post-secondary education because same.
7. Receive your credential. Do the thing. Realize that thing isn't at all what you want to do. Go back to your part-time job in an artisanal bakery. Congrats, you have failed at being an adult.
8. Recreational drugs.
9. Meet the man you will eventually hitch your wagon to.
10. Do less drugs...do no drugs...drugs are stupid, why did you do all those drugs?
11. Experience a five year interval of relative normality. Marriage, mortgage, larvae.
12. Become acutely aware that you don't fit in with the other moms. Congrats, you've failed at normal.
13. Read Twilight for some reason.
14. With haughty disgust, claim that you can do better.
15. Write a fucking terrible novel.
16. Write more. Take classes. Drink wine. Meet other writers. These are your people, and just like you, they are exhausting and adorable.
17. Sell a few stories. Make a little money.
18. It's not enough money. You have larvae to feed, and you're out of wine.
19. Get a job in a bookstore, and know that you are living a cliché comparable to that of actor-slash-waiter.
20. Blog on a sporadic basis. Try doing it in list form because you heard somewhere that people like lists. The list is too long. You have no idea what you're doing. Congrats, you're a writer.