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On Writing: 10 GIFs That Accurately Describe the Creative Process

Writers take to Twitter to show what writing is really like.

Deepali Agarwal

Staff Writer

Deepali Agarwal has a Master’s in literary linguistics, which means that every person she’s ever known has, at some point, asked her to ‘edit a thing’ for them-- ‘just see if it reads okay?’ She doesn’t mind, because she believes that the world can be fixed one oxford comma at a time. Deepali lives in Delhi, the capital of India, where cows are sacred, but authors and poets exist and write brilliant things. She works as an editor with OUP India’s School ELT division, where she moves apostrophes, looks up pictures of cats, and talks about children’s books for eight hours. The rest of her day is spent reading, thinking about Parks and Recreation, and wondering if there exist jobs for English majors that pay more than peanuts. Twitter: @DeepaliAgarwal_

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Sorry, Stephen King, but social media is more accurate than you when it comes to talking about the craft of writing. I mean, we can all pretend to have a sophisticated process with defined steps, but honestly, it’s more madness than method at any given stage. And when words and sentences elude you, what better way than to say it with our universal language — GIFs! Twitter has been at it, digging up the most painfully accurate, gif-y descriptions of their creative processes, under the hashtag #DescribeYourCreativeProcessWithAGif.

1.  When you have an idea, and need to type it out before it falls out of your head:

2.  When you’re trying to edit out some garbage, but fail miserably:

3. Hoping against hope that what you wrote last night still makes sense in the morning, but alas:

4. When your brain is searching for the correct word, you have it on the tip of your tongue, but can’t quite put it down:

5. When you’re sitting among countless discarded drafts and are about to give up:

6. When you’re trying to convert emotions to text, without breaking down:

7. When the plot makes sense to you, but nobody else is convinced:

8. When you realize you spent the entire day looking for the perfect font:

9. When you feel like everything is lost, and lose the ability to do the simplest of things. What is sentence? What is word?

10. When your own typos embarrass you. Writing is a constant stream of self-deprecation:

Here is my contribution, presented to you via the evergreen Ron Swanson.
When the day is over, and you know you haven’t gotten any writing done today, but you need to bang out *something* to convince yourself of your productivity.

via GIPHY