We can’t lie: writers are pretty freaking awesome. For hours, days, weeks and sometimes even years we’re sitting, bent over our computers, furiously typing while our minds are lost in imaginary worlds. We build castles, save civilizations, defeat dragons, cure illnesses, win battles, and change lives all without leaving our desks. So, enough with the modesty: we’re incredible. But, alas, we can’t take all of the credit for our greatness. Please, allow us to take this opportunity to thank the parties that have shared and aided in our grand accomplishments:

1) Erasers (Delete Key)

Oh, erasers. Thank you for saving us from our typos and all of the embarrassingly bad prose we’ve immediately regretted. Thanks to you, we don’t have to toss out the whole draft everytime we use the wrong form of ‘their’ when we haven’t had enough coffee yet. Speaking of which…

2) Coffee (or Tea)

Sweet sweet (and not so sweet) Coffee, thank you for giving us life. For helping us stay awake long past our bedtimes to finish the sections of our book we just had to get down before they slip away. Thank you, also, for helping us the next day when we need to work our day jobs without falling asleep at our desks. You give us strength when our frail human bodies have none left. You keep our eyes open in times of need. Bless you.

3) Spellcheck

From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you, spellcheck. Though we have been blessed with creative minds, we sadly have not been blessed with perfect spelling and grammar (much as we may wish otherwise). Thank you for poking us with that red squiggly line and keeping us from embarrassing ourselves time and time again.

Thank you to our dear editors. This thank you is especially necessary because half of the time we can’t stand you guys (sorry). You take your editor axes and chop up our book babies and we have to sit there and watch it happen. Does this not sound grateful enough? All jokes aside, we know we fight you tooth and nail on every cut, but our book wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is without your hard work. Thank you for seeing what we miss and being tougher than we can ever be.

5) Google

This is a big one- THANK YOU GOOGLE. Because of you, we don’t need to spend hours in the library just to resolve one solitary plot point like the writers of old. The ease with which we can now look up old cold cases or political happenings or the science behind space travel has changed the writing game. Researching is such an important part of writing but, thanks to you, it takes a heck of a lot less time. Thank you for your service.

6) Our friends/family

To our friends and family, we are also truly grateful. Thank you for putting up with us. Thank you for understanding when we cancel plans last minute for an urgent writing night. Thank you for knowing we still love you when we don’t text you back for weeks because we’re so deep into our fantasy novel that we forgot the outside world still exists. Thank you for encouraging us in a career path that everyone else says will leave us living in a cardboard box. Thank you for forcing us out of the house when we have a nasty case of writer’s block (or we just haven’t seen sunlight in weeks). Thank you for listening to us talk about imaginary people for hours on end and pretending you care. We know we’re not the easiest people to deal with at times, but thank you for loving us all the same.

7) Our characters

To our characters AKA our real friends- thank you. Thank you for presenting yourselves to us and for allowing us the privilege of witnessing your lives. We feel honored to have witnessed your elation, struggles, desires, adventures, triumphs, losses, and so much more. We’ve grown to love you so much and can only hope we’ve done justice to what we’ve seen by jotting it all down. No matter how hard we try to the contrary, we’ll always know you much better than our readers ever will. Thank you for being a part of us and allowing us to be a part of you.

8) Strangers

Darling strangers, thank you so much. Thank you for allowing us to spy on you for hours on end with little to no repercussions. Thank you for your mannerisms, your quirks, your style, your gestures, and your words- because we stole all of them. Thank you for being so specifically weird that you vastly improve the quality of our writing. Without you, our writing wouldn’t be nearly as realistic and interesting. Thank you for allowing us to witness your bizarre majesty and for being oblivious enough not to notice us staring and hanging on your every word.

9) Our enemies

This is a weird one, but hear us out. Yes, you are all terrible. But, thanks to you, our books have some really great villains. We’ll go to our graves denying it, but our villains are definitely based (at least in part) on you guys. Without you ruining our lives with your horribleness, our villains wouldn’t be nearly as specific and awful as they are. Our readers love to hate our villains, all thanks to you. So are we happy you exist? No. Did you finally do something good though? Sort of. So we sort of thank you for it.

10) Our notebooks/phones

We thank you both so very much. Without you guys, we would never remember half of the stuff our fickle brains come up with. Our ideas are so fleeting and brief, but you guys are always right there with us so we can jot them down before they slip away. Thank you for holding all of our crazy ideas, keeping them safe from harm, and for having them ready just when we need them most. We know we don’t always treat you the best. We drop you, we tear out your pages, we scribble and get so disorganized that you lose all sense of purpose. But, if we ever lost you, it would be like losing a part of ourselves.

11) Books

We may tear up a bit on this one, but thank you, books. You were and will always be the first and greatest love of our lives. You are the reason we fell in love with writing. You are also the reason we got good at writing and you still improve both our writing and our lives to this day. You’ve taught us about life, love, family, culture, history, imagination, and what it means to be human. Ironic as it is, there are no words to express our gratitude toward you.

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