A new report in the Journal of Death Studies suggests that poets have a shorter life expectancy than other types of writers:

It could be because poets are tortured and prone to self-destruction, or it could be that poets become famous young, so their early deaths are noticed, said James Kaufman of the Learning Research Institute at California State University at San Bernardino.

For the report, published in the Journal of Death Studies, Kaufman studied 1,987 dead writers from various centuries from the United States, China, Turkey and Eastern Europe. He classified the writers as fiction writers, poets, playwrights, and nonfiction writers. He did not study the causes of death.

"Among American, Chinese and Turkish writers, poets died significantly younger than nonfiction writers," Kaufman wrote in the report. "Among the entire sample, poets died younger than both fiction writers and nonfiction writers." (via CNN)

OK, but what if you don't just do one type of writing? I write poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Thus, if the study finds that the average life span for the following writers are such:

Poets; 62
Playwrights :63
Novelists: 66
Nonfictionwriters: 68

If I find the combined average of the life span for poets, novelists and non-fiction writers than my life expectancy would be: 65.3 years. However, if I decide to also write a play then my life expectancy drops down to 64.75 years. Hmmm, something to keep in mind...