You Know You're a Writer When ... by Louise Marley

People have this strange idea that writers are odd …

1. You can have a big fat book of poisons on your bookshelf and no one thinks anything of it

And it’s sat right between those books on weaponry and causes of death (mwah ha ha).

2. You talk to yourself in the supermarket

If you must act out your dialogue, can't it wait until you get home? Try carrying a notebook and pen to jot down ideas. You should have plenty of these because,

3. People are always giving you notebooks and pens for presents

Possibly because you write snatches of dialogue on anything that happens to be handy: magazines, kitchen roll, an old T-shirt (which unfortunately turned out to be not quite as ‘old’ as you’d thought). Which means,

4. No one dares to throw away any scrap of paper in case that illegible bit of scribble was the tricky part of your work in progress - and you have a complete meltdown

I’m only going to say this one more time - use the damn notebook.

5. You have an inordinate amount of photographs of hot men downloaded onto your computer

These are inspiration for possible heroes, obviously. Duh!

6. When watching a movie, you finish all the actors’ sentences for them and can guess who’s ‘dunnit’ before the opening credits finish

No one likes a smartass. However,

7. It’s amazing how many movies you can con your family and friends into seeing at the cinema in the name of ‘research’

Mmm, Johnny Depp …

8. You can spend all day on the Internet and that’s called ‘research’ too!

Although you may want to delete some of those Google searches.

9. Before your friends will part with any juicy gossip, you have to swear not to put it in your next book

That's an easy one. By the time you've changed all the names, locations and er, 'props', no one is going to recognise themselves anyway. Hopefully.

10. You set the dinner table for the wrong number of people

Because you were thinking about your imaginary family, not your real one. But hey, at least you remembered to cook dinner! You did remember to cook it, right?

11. You give one of your children the same name as your latest hero/heroine because you hadn’t got the name out of your system when you went into labour

But as your children think it’s far too cringe-worthy to read one of your books, that secret is probably safe.

12. You’ve perfected the art of being able to quote back the last thing anyone says to you, just in case they notice your eyes have glazed over - and realise you’re thinking about your latest plot

You’ve perfected the art of being able to quote back the last thing anyone says to you -

13. You also have procrastination down to an art form. Instead of working on your new book, you’re entertaining yourself by writing/reading stuff like this

Ah …

Louise Marley writes romantic comedy and romantic suspense.

Her latest book, Breathless, is out now