Self-Assessment for Aspiring Novelists: Read how one hundred great novelists think, to see if your mind works that way and if writing is for you.

Reading all eight hundred posts in this blog (written since 2013) will not make you a great novelist. But it might help you decide whether you have the potential to be a great novelist.

Before I did the reading for this blog, I had assumed that writers’ minds were basically like everyone else’s. Perhaps, as I had heard, they had more depression, bipolar disorder, and drinking. Perhaps they were highly imaginative. Perhaps they were a little eccentric. But wasn’t the main thing that they loved to write and had devoted themselves to it? Couldn’t anyone with the same love and devotion be a great writer, too?

What I found is that writers—according to what they have said about themselves, and how this is reflected in their writing—do not think like everyone else.

But neither are they freaks of nature. My guess is that about 30% of the general public thinks the same way that writers do, and that people from that 30% self-select themselves to become writers, resulting in 90% of writers’ thinking that way (a normal version of multiple personality).

Why 90%? Why not 100%. Two reasons. First there is the study of fifty writers by Marjorie Taylor et al, cited in this blog. Second, I just assume there must be some novelists who don’t think that way.

Where do I get the 30% figure? That is more of a guess. First, since novelists have to come from somewhere, there must be a pool of people in the general public who think the same way. Second, surveys find that a surprising number of people believe in angels, etc. Third, imaginary companions (similar to multiple personality) are common in childhood (although not everyone who had them remembers it). Fourth, the antecedent of multiple personality, childhood trauma (of various kinds and degrees) is relatively common.

I have addressed this post primarily to aspiring novelists rather than to great novelists, because there are more of the former than the latter. However, this blog may also be of interest to writers who have already proven themselves. They might like to know whether, and to what extent, other writers think the way they do.