highly sensitive person writerMy profession is writer and editor. For clients, I do grantwriting, edit ebooks and courses, ghostwrite blog posts, edit podcast scripts, and more.

Since I was a young child, it seemed that being a writer was my destiny. I loved to read–probably something I picked up from my dad. I always had my head in a book. I miss the days of being able to read all the time without any other worries. (Now, it’s difficult for me to focus when reading a book because I keep thinking about all the other things I need to get done.)

I think that many Highly Sensitive Persons are–or would like to be–writers. Especially those who are introverts. We find expressing ourselves in the written word to be freeing, exacting, thoughtful, and the preferred method of communication. With words I can paint a picture of what I’m feeling. I can take my time, think about what I want to say, and carefully select the right words.

On a flight, I once struck up a conversation with the person next to me. We discovered that we were both writers and “liked words”, and he suggested a game: we tried to think of words to stump the other person. Oh man, I was so on board with this game. Yes!!

We came upon a few words where we weren’t 100% confident about the definition. One of these was the word “pariah.” We both had slightly different ideas of what “pariah” meant. Both definitions were close to correct, but not totally. I found the nuanced difference about how we understood this word to be fascinating. It said something about each of us and how we’ve experienced and personally interpreted the word in the past.

As a writer, I am into words. I am fascinated by their meaning and etymology. I have a good time with a dictionary. Even more so, I am fascinated by fonts. I find it incredibly, superbly fascinating that simply looking at a font can make you feel a certain way. A certain slant, curve, spacing, or stylistic feature calls to mind a time frame, a style, or even an emotion. A font may strike you as “old-timey”, “serious”, “youthful”, or “futuristic”. A font that would look good on a website for a bank might not look good on an auto repair shop. We are surrounded by fonts but so rarely think about the thought and artistry that goes into them, and the people who create them.

Do you think of yourself as a writer? What do you like about writing? How do you feel about fonts?

photo credit: Ian Britton via flickr