How to Stop Being a Writer: A Non-Comprehensive List

Lose your computer charger.

After “Ten Ways to Stop Being a Writer” by Daien Guo

Photo by Gauravdeep Singh Bansal on Unsplash

1. Lose your computer charger. Spend your entire writing time searching for said charger.

2. Spy on your neighbors’ houses for sale on Zillow. Admire their decorating choices and decide you should buy new curtains or reposition your couch the way they did. Come to think of it, you should probably sell your house, too, which means you’ll finally have to clean out the basement. Wander around your house holding an empty trash bag until you lose interest.

3. Tell someone you’re working on a big writing project. It’s not necessary to specify what the project is, or even to know for yourself what the project might be. Just saying the words aloud will create a mysterious aversion to opening your computer. In your spare time, take up a new hobby, like yard croquet.

4. Have children. Any children will do, but it’s especially good if you can recruit a miniature summer camp director, who will be right beside you as your eyes open each morning, shouting, “Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”

5. Aim to make money. 

6. Get sick. Get your entire family sick. While you’re coughing for the third week in a row, with your children home during the few weeks they were supposed to go to summer school, start binge watching your favorite shows while your kids are parented by Dude Perfect videos on Youtube. (Learning how to make trick shots is a form of education, if not the one you intended.)

7. Become a birdwatcher. Birds fly all day. Don’t miss a thing.

8. While you’re out there watching the birds, obsessively check the status of your zucchini and okra plants. Begin to befriend your plants. Ask them questions, like why are you not blooming yet? or do you need more water? or could you, pretty please, supply me with a few garden metaphors for the poems I’m not writing? 

9. Open Instagram. Decide that the best thing for all of us would be to stop typing with our thumbs. Start typing something with your thumbs to preach exactly this message, realize after five minutes what nonsense you are participating in, and spend the rest of the day reconsidering your life choices. 

10. Play Wordle. Also Quordle, Octordle, Sedecordle, Phrazle, and Waffle. There are so many excellent(le) games to play to beef up your writing vocabulary, who has time for actual writing(le)?

Thanks to Ashlee Gadd for this fun assignment!