1) Use “journal” as a verb.
2) Invest in a good fedora.
3) Loudly and frequently recommend that everyone you meet “journal.”
4) Self-publish and make everyone come to at least three book launch parties; get bombed at all three of them and suggest that everyone “journal.”
5) Cultivate a style that says you’re above matters of facade; “hobo” bags can help.
6) Employ the word “limn” a lot; you might also try Googling helpful hacks to fit more of this word into your daily vocabulary.
7) Take yourself really seriously but pepper your speech with witty asides; tell people you haven’t done the whole DNA thing yet, but you might, just might, be related to Oscar Wilde.
8) Whip out your Moleskine notebook on the subway often because the Muse strikes; bonus points for looking wistful, or thinking about Oscar Wilde while doing so.
9) Staunchly refuse to leave the house without paraphernalia and props that will force people to ask if you’re a writer; a fountain pen, quill, or monogrammed journal will do; if all else fails, whip out a large, ageless portrait of Oscar Wilde.
10) Learn the subtle art of turning any conversation into an opportunity to give the elongated elevator speech about your current “piece” or “project”; it’s even better to do this in an actual elevator; because entrapment.
11) Pay more for a writing degree than you will ever make in a lifetime of writing; learn to call your day drinking “freelancing.”
12) Live in your parents’ basement; wake your parents in the middle of every night to tell them you’ve had a “breakthrough,” then go watch cat videos and eat taquitos until you pass out.
13) Invite your friends over under the pretense of a “fiesta” to workshop your poems; if they’re angry, offer them taquitos.
14) Use scare quotes a lot because, if you think about it, everything is scary, and requires quotes, and, also, you really like to think about everything, a lot, and then write about it, at length, with as many clauses as possible, because this way people will think you’re brilliant, and that you’re not an idiot for wasting all your money on that writing degree and living in your parents’ basement, and also that you’re a sentence journey-person like Saint Henry James or Saint William Faulkner.
15) Be brief like Hemingway; when you don’t know what to say to people, tell them how you’d attend bullfights, like Hemingway, if you weren’t theoretically vegan.
16) Sometimes. it’s okay to break the rules of grammar. And; syntax. But. Only if you’re brilliant. And making a point—
17) When you want to seem / Really deep / Employ poetic line breaks.
18) Store up a few Heidegger or Didion quotes and use them in all your essays; they can also double as dinner party fodder that will really wow your audience and remind them that you went to a pricy grad school—FOR WRITING.
19) Eavesdrop often; you’re first and foremost a listener; if the eavesdropped-upon party protests, whip out either the Heidegger or the Didion quote.
20) Take five books for a one hour plane ride and read none of them; instead, drink five tiny bottles of vodka and read five celebrity mags you shoplifted from the airport newsstand.
21) Spend more time Instagramming pics of vintage typewriters than you ever do writing.
22) Master the art of the Twitter humble brag and have every Facebook post be some form of “I’m surprised and honored to have received the following spectacular accolade.”
23) Ensure that the subtext of any conversation is some form of “buy my book”; if all else fails, hire a skywriter.
24) Master your “I’m seriously so happy for you that you got the fellowship, for which I’ve applied the past ten years, on your first try, without even applying” face.
25) Take out a loan, blow it all buying book-themed items on Amazon for your grotto in your parents’ basement, and then rave about the little shop in Paris where you purchased said books-themed items; extra props if you tell them in French, wearing a beret; it’s true; a beret can give you gravitas.