Saturday, March 17, 2007

(Note: Got this from a writer-friend's newsletter - Sharon Hinck.)

I’ve been pondering the clues that led me to decide I had a calling to write. I found and compiled a few old adages, collected ideas from friends, and sprinkled in a few of my unique experiences (and won’t admit to most of them). Here is my helpful guide for discerning your calling.

You might be a writer if . . .

1. You stop random strangers to tell them about your plot ideas
2. You believe that jail time is an appropriate punishment for misuse of the apostrophe
3. You participate in four different online critique groups simultaneously
4. You wake in the middle of the night with a brilliant line of dialogue and get up to write it down
5. People change tables in a restaurant because they notice you were writing down their conversation word for word
6. When you go grocery shopping you notice things one of your characters would like – and put it in your cart
7. You write a post-it note to one of your characters and leave it on the kitchen table to remind her of something she needs to do in her next chapter. (Okay, I confess. I did this one. My husband says it’s okay for me to write notes to my characters, as long as they don’t start writing notes to me).
8. There is no such thing as a “quick trip” to a bookstore
9. You wish Channel made a perfume with the scent of printer ink
10. One minute you’re convinced that every word you write is dreck and the next minute you’re sure your manuscript has the makings of a best seller
11. Your car is rear-ended and your first thought is what metaphor you would use to describe the sound
12. You bring a notebook to your child’s piano recital and jot a scene while the other kids are playing
13. You walk by the book aisle in Target and burst into tears because your heart has such a powerful yearning to see your stories on a book shelf one day
14. A police car with sirens blaring drives in to a scene you’re writing – and you didn’t see it coming.
15. You get paid for telling people what the voices in your head are saying.