This image is the cover for the book You Know You're a Writer When . . .

You Know You're a Writer When . . .

A collection of reflections on the nature of what it means to be a writer.

How do you find out what being a writer means to those who really are writers? You ask them. In this book, Adair Lara shares what the ink-stained, carpal-tunneled, slightly dazed, word struck people she knows had to say.

You know you’re a writer when . . .

 . . . You’ll never forgive your parents for your happy childhood.

 . . . The doctor tells you that you have terminal cancer, and you think, “I can use this.”

 . . . You accidentally sign a check with your pen name.

 . . . You know more than ten synonyms for “blue.”

 . . . You write your Christmas letter as if it were War and Peace.

Many readers will recognize themselves in this collection of observations about the eccentric, quirky, word-obsessed condition that is being a writer.</

Adair Lara

Adair Lara, author of the charming and popular Normal Is Just a Setting on the Dryer and many other books, has been a reporter and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle for 16 years.

Chronicle Books LLC