29 Words That Mean Something Totally Different When You're A Writer

It's been a highly productive day.

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1. "Writing."

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What it means: Committing words to paper or text to an electronic document.

What it means when you're a writer: Doing literally anything else.

2. "Protagonist."

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What it means: The main character in a story.

What it means when you're a writer: You.

3. "Friends."

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What it means: A non-romantic relationship between two or more people.

What it means when you're a writer: Characters for your novel.

4. "Netflix."

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What it means: A video streaming service for watching films and television series.

What it means when you're a writer: Research!

5. "Research."

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What it means: Exhaustive, in-depth process of uncovering facts about a subject.

What it means when you're a writer: Netflix!

6. "Plot."

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What it means: The events that make up a story.

What it means when you're a writer: Something genre writers worry about.

7. "Character development."

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What it means: How a character changes and grows during the course of a story.

What it means when you're a writer: Something literary writers worry about.

8. "Secrets."

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What it means: Sensitive information only shared with trusted individuals, i.e., close friends.

What it means when you're a writer: Plot ideas!

9. "Starbucks."

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What it means: Pedestrian chain of cafés. Better at taxes than coffee.

What it means when you're a writer: Day care!

10. "Feedback."

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What it means: A process of critiquing a narrative work in order to improve it.

What it means when you're a writer: Compliments or GTFO.

11. "Sex."

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What it means: Penetrative intercourse.

What it means when you're a writer: You're either doing it, or writing about doing it. You're writing about doing it.

12. "Twitter."

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What it means: A social media platform allowing for short updates up to 140 characters in length.

What it means when you're a writer: A social media platform that allows you to stalk agents and publishers.

13. "#amwriting."

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What it means: A Twitter hashtag used to denote when a writer is sitting down to work on a story.

What it means when you're a writer: #amtweeting.

14. "Weekend."

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What it means: A break at the end of the working week used primarily for leisure, typically Saturday and Sunday.

What it means when you're a writer: Something other people have.

15. "Alcoholic beverage."

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What it means: Beers, wines, and spirits.

What it means when you're a writer: Story juice!

16. "Exercise."

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What it means: An activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness.

What it means when you're a writer: An activity where you try to write from the point of view of a chair/plant/member of the opposite sex.

17. "Sprint."

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What it means: Running at full speed.

What it means when you're a writer: Writing as many words as possible in a short time with no regard for quality. Also known as trying to hit your word count.

18. "Novel."

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What it means: A book length narrative.

What it means when you're a writer: So far you have the title.

19. "Literary agents."

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What it means: A person who represents writers and their work to publishers.

What it means when you're a writer: Mythical creatures that everyone talks about, but no one you know has actually encountered.

20. "Best-seller."

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What it means: An extremely popular book.

What it means when you're a writer: A book with an obvious lack of literary merit.

21. "Critical darling."

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What it means: A book that is well-reviewed and nominated for all the big literary prizes.

What it means when you're a writer: No one read it.

22. "Draft."

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What it means: An in-progress version of a literary work.

What it means when you're a writer: How you refer to your finished novel when someone criticises it.

23. "Editing."

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What it means: The process of correcting and modifying a manuscript with the intention of improving it.

What it means when you're a writer: Crying into your keyboard because everything is shit.

24. "Under submission."

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What it means: The process of sending your manuscript out to agents and publishers.

What it means when you're a writer: I haven't worked up the courage to send my manuscript to anyone yet.

25. "Marketing."

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What it means: Communicating the value of a product or service, for the purpose of selling that product or service.

What it means when you're a writer: Desperately spamming your Twitter and Facebook friends with links to your book page.

26. “I write for the purity of the art.”

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What it means: What writers say when asked about their literary motivation.

What it means when you're a writer: I want to be famous.

27. "Reader."

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What it means: Someone digesting a text, in this case a work of literature.

What it means when you're a writer: An unseen enemy, impossible to understand and therefore to be feared.

28. "Online reviewer."

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What it means: A person leaving a "critique" of your work on Goodreads/Amazon/Twitter/a blog.

What it means when you're a writer: Kill it. Kill it with fire.

29. "Highly productive day."

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What it means: Got a lot done.

What it means when you're a writer: Masturbated a lot.