THE LIFE OF AN AUTHOR

You know you're an author when:

1. Conversations like this happen:

The other day, I was chatting with a friend about my book because she had just downloaded it. She had asked about outlining or something and I was telling her that I wrote the first book without much of an outline, but that it came back to bite me later when I had to practically rewrite the entire book. Then the conversation turned to how things happened unexpectedly.

Me: So, you haven't read it yet, but Brant, the main character, he wasn't supposed to make it past the first chapter.Friend: You were going to kill him?Me: No, he just wasn't supposed to be all that important or a main character. [at this point, another gal came up and sat down next to me as I continued talking] I wasn't going to kill him, I wasn't even going to kill anyone around him.Friend: Oh, I see!Me: [realizing how weird and slightly freaky the conversation must sound to the lady now sitting next to me] Wow... that just sounded really bad. Not planning a murder here.

And we both laughed. I'm sure her worries were eased. er... or something.

2. Your five year old announces to the cashier at Target that "I just got a new notebook so I can write books like my Mommy!" And it starts a conversation about, "Oh, you're a writer? What do you write?"

3. You always have a pen nearby.

4. If you don't have a pen nearby, it is tantamount to the apocalypse. "What if I have the world's greatest idea and I can't write it down?!?!?!!?!?"

5. All your best ideas show up right around the time you're about to fall asleep. And then they sit there, knocking on your head and threatening to disappear come morning until you groan, turn on the light, and grab a pen to jot them down.

6. You talk about your characters as if they're real people (they are), and insist that they are constantly trying to take over your story.

7. You've come to accept that your characters have all the best ideas. And you don't understand why people look at you strangely when you announce this.

8. You take secret delight whenever something you wrote moves a reader to tears.

9. You think that spending a day writing thousands of words is one of the most fun things you could choose to do.

10. You find the question, "What are you thinking?" to be a very difficult one to answer, because, more likely than not you were thinking something along the lines of, "Character A needs to ultimately get to location C, but along the way he needs to stop at location A and where he will meet characters B,C, and D, who will help him along his quest, but he really needs to avoid location B for now because I don't want him going there until later, but how do I get him from A to C without crossing location B? I need a good excuse for him to travel the long way that isn't weird or awkward or cliche."

Fellow authors? Have you had any, "You know you're an author when...." moments?