A writer is a strange animal, and nobody has ever published a proper field guide.
Biologists have charts for frogs, sharks and the common housefly. They label every organ and explain what it’s for. Writers get nothing of the kind. We discover our own anatomy the hard way, at two in the morning, when a part we didn’t know we had starts aching.
So I was delighted when an infographic called “Anatomy of a Writer” crossed my feed. It shows a gray stick figure, the kind you see on a restroom door, with bright yellow pins stuck into it like a voodoo doll. Each pin labels a part, from a logical brain for figuring out how to publish a book down through a coffee throat, deep-breathing lungs, a passionate heart and a tummy full of snacks, all the way to cozy socks for long writing nights.
It’s charming, and it’s mostly right.
But I’ve been dissecting writers for years, starting with the one in my own chair, and the chart leaves out several organs and gets a couple of others wrong. So I drew my own.
What does a writer’s brain do all day?
The infographic gives the writer a logical brain for figuring out how to publish a book. That’s generous. Publishing has enough moving parts to make a logical brain whimper. ISBNs, trim sizes, metadata, categories, distribution channels and a cover that has to work at the size of a postage stamp. Logic helps. A strong stomach helps more.
My brain does something odder, and I’ve given it a name: the ink-blot method. I start with an idea and a first chapter. Then I outline. Then I pick five or ten big plot points and write outward from each one, like drops of ink spreading on paper, until the blots touch and the book connects.
A scientist would call it chaotic. I call it Tuesday.
It works.
It also means my brain holds a dozen half-finished scenes at once and refuses to put any of them down. Anatomically speaking, that’s a feature.
The imagination has a mind of its own
The chart’s second pin is an incredible imagination, sitting right next to the logical brain. In the drawing they share a skull peacefully. In real life they fight like cats in a sack. The logical brain writes an outline. The imagination reads it, nods politely and does whatever it wants. My characters take over. Each one grows its own personality and its own arc, and at some point they start overruling the plot I planned.
I’ve learned to let them. They win the argument more often than I do. They also don’t take criticism well.
I love twisty plots, so my imagination also has a habit of hiding things. Every twist in my novels is set up with small hints, planted early, so a reader can look back and see it coming even though they didn’t. Picture a squirrel that buries a nut in chapter two and digs it up in chapter thirty. Same organ.
Do writers need thick skin to read reviews?
The infographic says yes. Thick skin for reading and processing reviews. I respect the optimism. My solution is simpler. I don’t read reviews of my own books. Ever. That’s a firm policy, because one bad review can knock me off my game for a long stretch, and I have books to write. The chart pins the skin. I’d add a second pin to the eyes, labeled “trained not to look.” Thick skin is good. Not going outside in the storm is better.
Writers do need thick skin for other things, though. Rejection, for one. Writers’ groups, for another. I’ve watched people in writing groups on Facebook get torn to pieces for using AI as a tool, and I’ve seen more vitriol over that one subject than almost anything else online.
Grow the skin. Then pick your rooms carefully.
Every writer needs thick skin for reviews. Mine is simpler. I don’t read them. Thick skin is good. Not going outside in the storm is better. – Richard LoweShare on X
How fast does a writer need to type?
Fast enough to keep up with the imagination. Nobody has managed it yet. The chart asks for nimble, dexterous fingers to keep on typing, and on this point we agree completely.
Mine started on WordPerfect, back when that was what serious people used. I moved to Microsoft Word when it first came out and never left. After all these years my fingers know Word the way a pianist’s fingers know scales. I’m blazingly fast in it. That speed matters when you’re writing for clients in the morning and the evening and for yourself in the afternoon.
Before books, those same fingers hand-coded somewhere around five or six thousand HTML pages across several websites. Every tag, every table, typed by hand.
If writers’ fingers had calluses, mine would be hooves.
What’s in a writer’s wallet?
The infographic gives the writer a wallet in the back pocket, full of money for laptops and book promos. Full is an optimistic word. I’d label it “historically startled.”
My wallet has seen a few things. It once watched Amazon’s KDP terminate my account because I followed Amazon’s own instructions for changing a paperback subtitle. I unpublished the old edition and published the new one, as told, and an automated system decided I had two versions of the same book at once. No human ever answered. So I moved my whole catalog to IngramSpark. It still gets the books onto Amazon, and it treats authors like business partners.
The wallet has had good days too. When I launched Focus on LinkedIn, I priced it at 99 cents and promoted it hard on LinkedIn, and it sold 15,000 copies in three days. At 99 cents, that’s a lot of copies and a modest amount of wallet.
Still, I’ll take it.
The parts the chart left out
A good dissection finds organs the textbook missed. Here are mine.
First, a spine. Mine is built in three sections: a client in the morning, my own books in the afternoon and another client in the evening. The order shuffles now and then, and the spine holds.
Second, a mouth. Writers are supposed to be quiet, and I’m a deep introvert who prefers working alone. Yet the same mouth has done 100+ guest podcast appearances. Introverts can talk for an hour about something they love. It’s the cocktail party that kills us. Third, a goal gland. Mine produces one obsession: a full-length novel, 300 pages or more, in each of about twenty fiction genres. I’m roughly halfway. The gland shows no sign of slowing down.
Strong legs, and where they should take you
The infographic gives the writer strong legs to trudge up to the office. Fair enough. But legs are also the most underrated marketing organ a writer owns. What has sold my books, more than anything online, is direct contact. A table at a live event, a stack of books and a person who stops to ask what the book is about. I’ve been getting out more lately, to local places and libraries, and the legs approve. A writer who never leaves the office has a gorgeous imagination and an audience of one.
As for the cozy socks, the slippers and the tummy full of snacks, I’ll leave those pins where the original artist put them. Some anatomy is private.
Is there a perfect writer’s anatomy?
No. Every writer I’ve worked with, and I’ve ghostwritten 54+ books, has a different arrangement of parts. Some have a magnificent imagination and a logical brain the size of a raisin. Some have iron skin and fingers that type forty words a minute. Some have an enormous heart and a wallet full of moths.
Most of these organs grow with use. The brain learns structure. The skin toughens. The fingers speed up. Even the wallet recovers, eventually. The heart is the one part you can’t transplant, and it’s the one that keeps you at the desk when every other organ wants a nap.
Know your own parts
Print the original infographic if you like. Stick it over your desk. Then grab a pen and add your own pins, because the real anatomy of a writer is the one you discover by writing.
If you want help with the parts that ache, the Writing Hub covers craft, process and the business side, and I’ve written about why writers procrastinate and how humor works on the page. And if you’re ready to finish a book, my book coaching is built for writers at every stage of anatomical development. Bring your socks.
