A few nights ago, if you were on Twitter you might have noticed the hashtag #ThingsOnlyWomenWritersHear trending. Since I am 1) a woman writer and 2) have heard some astounding shit which has tempted me on more than one occasion to take the action shown above (I’ve managed to abstain by reminding myself that I’m a redhead and orange isn’t my power color), I posted a couple of tweets.

One of them, “Well, it’s not like it’s real work, right?” could in fact be applied to all sexes of writers, something I later acknowledged (although one male writer did say that women probably heard it more often than men). The other, “Wait, you write science fiction? But you’re a woman” was something that a then-new doctor actually said to me after asking me what I did. Since I needed a refill on my Synthroid scrip I just gave him a thin smile at the time (sometimes you have to pick your battles). I was very surprised to find my tweets liked and retweeted time and time again, but I didn’t really think anything about it other than, “Yeah, obviously I wasn’t the only one to get this.”

A few hours ago, I learned that 27 of the most relatable tweets in this hashtag had been collected for an article at The Tempest, and in fact my first tweet was used as the lede. The article itself included tweets from such literary lights as S.E. Hinton, Joanne Harris, Kate Elliott, and a host of other brilliant writers who have many, many more followers than I do. I have no idea how I wound up with these amazing women, but I’m proud as hell that I was included.