There is a certain arrogance associated with writers. A thick chip permanently rests atop their left shoulder and blocks their view every time they try to look back. This need to convince other people of things, and inflate thoughts until they explode all over is a disease. Writers are forever stumbling off into the night in search of what to write next and sometimes they never return.

Type A writer’s syndrome is the search for acceptance. It is the search for proof that your words form crisp sentences and understandable paragraphs. A quest to do more than the next person. Type A’s usually design the book cover before they even have an idea of what their words will sound like. They organize, they edit, they rinse and repeat. They work hard at selecting their words and then work harder to get somebody to read them. These people have come to the writing for a reason. Popularity is usually a good excuse. Inside of a thesaurus next to popularity, you’ll find acceptance.

Type B writer’s syndrome is the insanity of writing. The afflicted must sort out words jumbled together inside of an idea. There are long words, short words, pretty words, ugly words, and the best of all words, the make believe words. Whenever a conversation happens, type B’s try to correct the sentences spoken to them. Type B’s wake up in the middle of the night to write something down on an envelope stamped final notice that only they will understand in the morning. The words have found this person. They shake the writer violently and yell for them to be used. They possess the afflicted and seep out through their fingertips. Type B’s have never tried to write. They just do. Other people waste their time trying to paint Type B’s as geniuses and, in return, they find out that there’s a fine line between genius and insanity.

For both types, a blank piece of paper has never existed. There are potential words already visible to him or her. Type A’s will color the words so that they’re seen by everybody. Type B’s will unscramble the words so that they can get on with their own day. Whether the words are chasing you, or you are chasing the words, your day will be consumed by writing. It will become a set of experiences drawn together to find the perfect word, then another set of experiences to place that word into the perfect sentence, and so on, and so forth.

There are a great many afflictions that the world would be healthier without, but a great many more that should be championed. Before you even pick up a pen or sit down at a keyboard to insult this great sport of an existence, take the time to understand what those people who stand on the stage where you wish to be standing go through. Prepare yourself for an introduction to your new self for which there is no known cure. For someone to traipse into something, and declare accomplishment without suffering is just plain ignorance, and last I checked ignorance is more than three hundred pages away from arrogance.

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