Being a writer is more like a mental illness than a gift.
When you're a writer, writing isn't really something you can just "not do." I mean, you CAN just NOT WRITE, but then you end up waking up in the middle of the night with your eyes like this O.O thinking, "Oh my god, oh my god, where is my notebook, where is my notebook" and fly out of bed and knock your lamp off trying to turn it on and tear your room apart looking for it. Because you had this one line that sounded good in the dream you were having and you might be able to use it sometime.
Or, you're just living life, maybe babysitting, and you get on the kids' tire swing. Sudden the warm breeze is just right and the sun hits your leg and the tree you're under seems perfect and the way the tire swings is spelling one thing to you: STORY IDEA. And yet here you are again without your notebook so you must as calmly as possible ask the kid you're watching if he has any notebook paper available please???
And, for the record, getting a story idea isn't always {or ever} accompanied by that delicious, dreamy look writers get in movies. You know, as an idea gently floats through their mind and they reach for a neat stack of paper and a quill pen.
Actually, getting a sudden story idea feels a lot like wetting your pants.
It's urgent, unexpected and embarrassing, especially if your eyes do the aforementioned thing {O.O}. For me, when an idea hits me like that, it's like a window has been opened to my soul, bright and blue and pure, and I'm afraid everyone can see into it. I feel the physical urge to cover myself.
{This is giving you a whole new appreciation for the mental illness metaphor I used earlier, isn't it?}
Then, if I'm with other people, it's awkward because 1) My eyes just did the bullfrog for no apparent reason and so 2) I have to play it off with some unconvincing excuse because 3) when that Soul Window is open my lying skillz are way incapacitated and 4) I'm also having to hide the fact that I desperately want to GET AWAY FROM YOU and write.
Then there's also the frequently referenced problem of the voices in your head.
Yeah, I don't get that. The only character who won't shut up is Ember, and she's basically an independent form of myself, so...yeah, however that works.
Buuut anyway you slice it, dice it, or look at it, we writers...
...are NOT normal.
~Stephanie
