You Might Be a Writer If...

Some weeks, I can think of at least three things I could write about in this Friday post. Other weeks, I'm praying to the gods of inspiration for, well...inspiration. Of course, I could do the high functioning thing and write down the extra two ideas in the creative weeks, but somehow, it never happens.

The save came this week at the eleventh hour, literally (11 p.m.), as my husband and I were walking out of the movies.

You might be a writer if...you've been told you've got an overly active imagination.

That's what my husband told me. He wasn't the first, just the latest. Poor guy.

We went to see the latest Star Trek movie last night. I admit it. I'm a trekkie. A huge trekkie. It's not my fault. I blame it on bad Sunday TV programming during my formative years as an adolescent. Sunday morning was such a let down after Saturday cartoons. Plus there was all that time to kill before church, the comics read and reread, my brother soundly aggravated and totured. What was a kid to do? Enter, deus ex machina extraordinaire, Star Trek reruns.

The original, of course. It was the 1970s. I watched them all, many times over. The only problem was, my brother and I hardly ever got to see an episode through to its end because we had to leave for church. We used to push it to the very last minute, begging our parents to let us finish.

Maybe it was all that unfulfilled longing that made me such a trekkie. Either way, come movie time last night, I was giggly with excitement. I hadn't read any of the previews, watched few to none of the trailers. I wanted to let the latest script writers do their thing.

It was great for me. I was thrilled, scared, excited, moved. If only my husband had remembered how moved I can get. More than once, the alien coming out of nowhere had me screeching or jumping or...well, I hit him one time so hard, I kind of hurt him. Poor guy. He spent the rest of the movie with his arms crossed, scooched away from me, avoided all contact for fear I might accidentally injure him again.

"You have an overly active imagination," he said as we were walking over. "Big time."

It's too true. I can't deny it because the evidence is overwhelming.

I tried levitating rocks with my mind after seeing Star Wars.

I slept with my neck covered for years after seeing a Sammy Terry midnight marathon of the early Dracula movies.

When my mom had to pull a splinter out of my hand when I was five or six, I got kind of emotional. "Everything is getting dark. I can't see anything. It hurts too much!" (Yes, I actually remember saying that.) My mother: "Open your eyes."

Oh yeah.

The only reason I think I was able to read Lord of the Rings as a child was because I imagined all of its black and sinister creatures more a sort of tarnished grey. And that still had me scared to death. After I saw Peter Jackson version of them, I didn't sleep for weeks.

I have an overly active imagination. I didn't know what to do with the thing, until I became a writer. Now all of those insane ideas can weave themselves into something that makes sense. Whole books come to me in the blink of an eye, and people ask me, "How did you think that up?"

Overly active imagination.

My characters don't just inhabit my brain, they dance around my office. Go shopping with me. Advise me on how to talk to my children.

Overly active imagination.

Bedtime stories for my kids come so easily, maybe too easily. We constantly miss bedtime.

It's a talent now, not an oddity. I love it. I just have to remember to buy my husband some protective gear for our next movie outing!