This week on The Debutante Ball, we are describing our personalities. To be honest, I have a hard time describing my personality, which varies according to the person with whom I am interacting and whether or not I’ve had my coffee. Plus, meta-cognition is not really my thing.
Therefore, I have decided to focus on your personality. Specifically, I am going to assess whether or not you have the personality of a writer. To this end, I spent a bunch of time devising a free interactive quiz online, only to discover at the end of the process that I’d have to pay to actually put it on my website so other people could use it. I regret to say that this caused a temporary but significant deterioration in my personality.
Because I am too cheap to pay for you to take a fun quiz, I chucked the clever one I’d made and started over with a crappier non-interactive quiz, which you can take below. Enjoy!
Question #1: You have written the world’s best novel. It’s humorous, it’s poignant, it’s compelling and brilliant, displaying a level of literary talent previously unknown to humankind. You know this is true because three of your friends said so. Excitedly, you send a letter to a literary agent, who reads your description of the masterpiece and responds with the following email:
“Not for me, thanks.”
Do you:
a) reply with an impassioned ten-page rebuttal
b) realize you are a talentless fraud and weep bitterly as you delete your entire manuscript
c) go online and trash the agent as an uncultured vulgarian who wouldn’t recognize literary genius if it bit him in the ass
d) all of the above
Question #2: You survived the epic failure of your first literary effort and have moved on to another manuscript. This one starts out pretty well but is soon derailed by a gargantuan plot problem. Do you:
a) blame your muse/spouse/children/day job for their endless attempts to sabotage your creative process
b) gnash your teeth, rend your clothes, and weep bitterly at the death of your dream
c) console yourself by going online and posting a scathing review of Jonathan Franzen’s latest book?
d) all of the above
Question #3: When describing your writing process, do you say things like “My characters drive the car. They dictate their own actions; I cannot control them any more than I could reverse the flow of the mighty river or crumble the mountain into fine ash. They simply channel me, like a literary medium, to bring them to life”?
a) Yes.
Results:
Since you read the quiz, I have determined your personality type is Writer. Congratulations!
