Seven Holiday Gift Ideas for the Writers in Your Life
December 06, 2017
Every holiday season, I get bombarded with messages from friends and fans telling me they’re dying to buy me a present but don’t know what to get such an accomplished author. Or maybe that’s just the dream I have every holiday season. It doesn’t really matter—I’m a fiction writer, thus fantasy and reality are interchangeable.
Besides, the holidays should be more about giving than receiving. That’s why I’m going to give you all something right now: An awesome list of ideas for gifts you can get me and the other writers in your life.
Some of the items on the list are just for fun, while others are extremely practical. The important thing is that all of them should be sent to my home address very soon to ensure they arrive by the last day of Hanukkah.
You’re welcome.
1) Bourbon of the Month Club membership. Alcohol has long helped writers by opening up creative channels and loosening the flow of prose. Without it, the world would likely be without such literary masterpieces as The Great Gatsby, The Sound and the Fury and The Sun Also Rises. And the world would definitely be without this blog post. Alcohol not only serves as a muse, it dulls the pain authors experience whenever their manuscript is rejected, their book doesn’t sell, or their tweet doesn’t get re-tweeted.
Some of you may be thinking, “But Greg, what if my writer friend doesn’t drink?” My response is, “I don’t understand the question.” Others might be thinking, “Why Bourbon of the Month Club?” My response to that is, “I couldn’t find a Bourbon of the Day Club.”
2) Remote cabin getaway. Whether a rustic Airbnb rental or an abandoned shack where an unsolved murder occurred decades ago, this gift will provide the peace and quiet your writer needs to clearly hear the voices in their head.
Ideally, you’ll want to find a place that doesn’t have wifi, TV, heating, air conditioning or anything else that might risk making the writer too happy and comfortable to produce anything of true literary value. Just keep in mind that, while suffering is good for a writer, dying is not (despite the boost in sales of existing books that death can provide). So be sure to stock the cabin with enough food to keep them alive during their retreat, and to remove all sharp objects and rope for the same reason.
3) Noise-canceling headphones. Not every writer has the luxury of being able to go away and suffer for days in a quiet cabin. Many have to stay home to do their telemarketing job and take care of their six cats. Fortunately, you can bring the quiet cabin directly to these scribes with a pair of noise-canceling headphones. There’s simply no better way for a domesticated writer to drown out the cacophony of laughter and love that daily disrupts their novel in progress.
For those of you on a budget or who are too cheap to spring for noise-canceling headphones, viable alternatives to help your writer friend shut out the real world include silicone earplugs, fluffy earmuffs, or slipping everyone they live with an Ambien.
4) Treadmill desk. Writers often spend days on end sitting in front of their computer, lost in their own imagination. This is great for creating new worlds; unfortunately, it’s even better for creating major heart attacks. Studies indicate that the sedentary nature of novel-writing is the third leading contributor to death among fiction authors, trailing only substance abuse and accidents resulting from setting manuscripts on fire.
Giving a writer a treadmill desk not only shows you care about them and their health, it helps to ensure they won’t die before they finish Book 3 of the trilogy they have you hooked on.
5) Hygiene app. It’s very easy to forget to bathe when totally focused on creating plot twists, getting drunk and setting fires. Now, this is not to suggest that all writers struggle to maintain personal hygiene. Surely J.K. Rowling and Stephen King have staff on hand to wipe them down at regular intervals. For the rest of the writing populace, there’s an app for that.
A hygiene app will remind hardworking authors to hop in the shower after every few chapters and to brush their teeth before passing out each morning, afternoon and night. These apps make for very affordable gifts and practically guarantee that the only foul odor coming from your writer friends will be their decaying dreams of earning a living wage.
6) Helmet. “Safety first” is something chemistry and industrial arts teachers continuously preach in class. Why English teachers don’t do the same is beyond me. If more of them took time to educate students on the dangers of writing, then emergency rooms would likely handle a million fewer self-inflicted head injuries each year.
But rather than blame the educational system, do your friends and family members who are writers a favor and gift them a helmet for the holidays. Sure, you could instead try convincing them to stop slamming their head against walls and desks and literary agents every time they get writer’s block or a rejection notice, but we all know that’s never going to change.
Please note that if you end up getting a writer the Bourbon of the Month Club membership and the treadmill desk I listed earlier, then you are legally obligated to throw in a helmet.
7) Impressive Amazon ranking. While the aforementioned gift ideas collectively will help a writer be productive, fit and inebriated, none of them will improve their Amazon ranking and make them feel better than every writer they know, which is all any writer really wants. Fortunately, this is an easy gift to provide. All you need to do is buy every book the writer has ever written and demand that all your friends and relatives and Twitter followers do the same. It's the gift that keeps on giving the seratonin boost a writer needs to keep from hurting themselves or anyone else.
The holidays aren’t just about giving; they’re also about outdoing others. So feel free to share your much better gift ideas for writers in the comments section, which is located beneath the banner aimed at helping you buy my latest novel.
Thanks, and ...
HAPPY WHATEVER THE HELL YOU CELEBRATE! May 2018 2021 be nothing even remotely like 2017 2020.
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