10 Ways to Know You're a Writer

Photo by Danillo Rizzuti
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=851

1. You'd rather write than eat.
2. When you have to eat you bring your laptop to the table and sneak in a few bites between typewritten words.
3. Everyone you know is a potential character in your next story.
4. Everyone you meet is a potential character in your next story.
5. You find spiritual applications in most everything you experience and imagine building devotionals around them.
6. Your emails are almost always three times longer than your friends' emails.
7. You can't stop yourself from editing your friends' emails.
8. Next to photos of your children and grandchildren, your most prized possession is your box of journals.
9. The most frustrating thing that happens to you is waking up at 2:00 in the morning with a killer writing idea and convincing yourself there's no way you'll forget it, only to lose it completely when you go back to sleep.
10. You make a list of 10 ways to know you're a writer.

-NR

(c) 2010 by Nancy Reinke. All rights reserved.

Sprague Lake, RMNP May 17, 2010

The sun is warm on my face as it casts a reflection on the water; a bright spot like a flash of light from a camera.  The air is calm; the customary wind absent.  In the distance a quacking mallard informs me that I am the intruder here.  Birds chattering in the trees behind me reinforce the duck's warning.  I hold my hand above my eyes, shielding them from the brilliant orb in the sky and look to the thousands of pines at the end of the lake.  Suddenly, a chipmunk scrambles across the log in front of me.  Startled, I jump, and in turn I spook the small animal.  He scurries below the log and I stretch my neck to peer at the spot where he has disappeared.  He pops up and peeks at me before bounding off to find a less predatory site.  Again I shade my eyes and search the end of the lake.  I see my husband walking along the shore, dwarfed by the pines behind him. Except for his movement I would lose him in the darkness of the majestic trees.  Above me the silver trail of a jet scratches the blue.  Where is the plane going, I wonder.  Are the travelers aboard looking down on the scene I am surveying?  No, I reason.  They are too far to the East to see what I see.  Distance can be deceiving.   Fifty yards to the left three mallards flap their wings and ascend, flying low, inches above the water.  After several feet they propel themselves into the sky, perform a forty-five degree turn in flawless unison and disappear into the woods.  I imagine "Wild Blue Yonder" playing in the background.  Dennis has returned to sit on the bench beside me.  I notice the shadow of my pen dancing on the journal in my lap and thank God that He has given me sight and hearing to experience His creation and the opportunity to transcribe it.

- NR