Which Writer Personality Type Are You?
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You might know your Myers-Briggs type, but have you ever considered your writer personality type? As a creative art, writing attracts all kinds of people, and if you've ever been in a creative writing workshop setting, then you've likely encountered some of these personality types.
As a book editor, I have worked with hundreds of writers at all stages, from debut authors working on their very first book to best-selling authors who have written dozens of books, so it's safe to say that I've encountered the whole gamut of writer personality types. Figuring out which one you fall under can help you better understand its potential impact on your career and success as a writer.
The Prolific Writer
The first writer personality type is the prolific writer. This is a writer who cranks out stories like there is no tomorrow. They seem to always be writing, from their commute on the train to after bedtime while the kids are sleeping, then they do it all again in the morning. They might have a messy notebook full of scribbles and doodles about their next story ideas, or they might have a notes app full of blurbs and links to research they’ve done for their stories.
These are the types of writers who can finish multiple books within a year and who are constantly thinking up their next story. Writing seems to come to them as naturally as breathing, and they never seem to hit that dreaded writer's block.
So, what does this writer personality type mean for their career? These writers often naturally lend themselves to writing series because they have the ability to produce a lot of text quickly and churn out new ideas pretty easily. This consistency allows them to continue engaging readers with a regular series.
At the same time, these writers should also be wary of prioritizing quantity over quality. They need to make sure they take time to sit with each draft and put in the work to revise and make it as strong as it can be. Sometimes, this personality type can be more focused more on the output rather than the introspective and, frankly, hard process of self-editing and revising.
The Sensitive Writer
The sensitive writer is first and foremost nervous and anxious about sharing their work. If they're in a workshop setting, their critique day is a huge source of anxiety. While they likely do understand and embrace the importance of constructive critique, and are even able to take critique well, they still associate a lot of anxiety and stress with it.
They are also generally reluctant to share their work with friends and family because they are very fearful of judgment. They are afraid that if someone doesn’t like their story, it will change their opinion of them as a person. Overall, they tend to have a hard time disentangling themselves from their writing. Because of that, they can fall into destructive writer habits.
What does this writer personality type mean for their career? The sensitive writers are often their own worst enemy, because the fear of sharing their work and the fear of critique and judgment can actually hold them back from advancing their career via publishing or strengthening their manuscript with an editor. By shrinking away from sharing their work, they hold themselves back from improving as a writer.
At the same time, these writers tend to be very empathetic and in tune with their emotions. They are able to write strong characters that the reader is able to connect with, which is definitely a plus.
The Business Oriented Writer
The third writer type is the business oriented writer. This writer is very sales-minded; perhaps they worked in a corporate or sales job before transitioning to writing, so they are very interested in the publishing process and the business side of writing. For instance, if they wrote a book, it's actually fun for them to put together a marketing plan, create an author website, think up potential ideas for events, and create an outline for book promotion. The business side of writing gives them a lot of excitement and energy.
What does this mean for their career? These business oriented writers tend to do well with self-publishing, because with self-publishing you have to be a self-starter. As the “publisher” of your own novel, you are responsible for your own marketing, publicity, and sales efforts. Writers who already have interest and skills in marketing and publicity will do well with the self-publishing process.
On the potential negative side, sometimes these types of writers have strict expectations for what they expect to achieve with their book sales. This personality type has a vision and a goal, and if reality doesn’t match those expectations, they might end up disheartened with their writing overall. It's important for them to stay realistic and give themself grace, and to not necessarily set these performance markers for themselves. After all, publishing is very unpredictable. No matter how much marketing, sales, and publicity money you put into a book, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to translate into sales or that readers are going to respond to it well.
The Perfectionist Writer
The next writer personality type is the perfectionist writer. The perfectionist might take years and years to write a single book because they continue to find things to edit and nitpick. This type of writer will wake up in the middle of the night with a new take on a scene and have to immediately go to their draft to change it–otherwise it's going to keep bothering them. They are also the type that will spend hours trying to work out the grammar of a single sentence.
This type of writer is likely to produce highly polished drafts, which can be a positive thing especially if you are planning to present your manuscript to a literary agent for representation. Literary agents are looking for drafts that are in pretty solid shape, even if they do need some more editorial work, because the more polished it is, the more likely it is that they're going to be able to sell that manuscript to a publisher. So, the perfectionist’s efforts can be helpful for attracting an agent's attention.
However, the downside is sometimes they can spend so much time self-editing that it becomes unproductive and detrimental to the work. Also, they might be spending so much time self-editing that they might be delaying the potential publication of their book. Writers like these have to know when to let go.
The Wild Card Writer
The final writer type is the wild card writer. You never know what to expect from the wild card writer. This is the person who doesn’t talk about their writing for months, and then all of a sudden they come out of the blue with something totally different than what they initially said they were working on. Or maybe they show up one day with a manuscript draft and you had no idea they were even writing something new at all. Or maybe they've been known to write in one genre and then suddenly they have now written something in a totally new genre. They are the erratic genius types that can wear many different hats, and they tend to be more experimental and fluid with their creative process.
These types of writers can do well publishing in literary journals and magazines, which are often seeking more experimental and genre-bending pieces. These writers might struggle with consistency in terms of how often they can produce a book-length manuscript and the type of story they want to tell. They don't necessarily want to tell the same type of story over and over again, which can be a challenge if a literary agent or a publisher is expecting a certain type of story from them because of a contract.
In short, these types of writers tend to not want to be boxed in in any way because it stifles their creative process, which is totally fair!
Now the big question is: which writer personality type are you? Maybe you're a blend of two or three different writer types!
Of course, there are way way more writer types than I went over in this article, but these are just some of the more common ones I have encountered. If anything in this article has resonated with you, I hope you now have a better understanding on how your approach to writing can actually affect your career.
Thanks so much for reading and happy writing!