Live Life Instead of Writing About It?

That was a line fired off to the author in Once Upon a Time, the episode Rebekah and I watched last night (We are behind).

It went off like a gong in my head. Whoever wrote it must be jealous of writers, LOL! Then again, maybe not, because the author has plenty of power in this series.

Okay, enough spoilers for fans of the show who are also behind in the episodes.

As a writer, I have never felt as if I was living life on the outside looking in. Rather, I feel humbled and blessed that thousands, yes thousands, of people have shared their grief, hopes, dreams, wishes, challanges and triumphs with me, and then allowed me to immortalize those experiences so the world can know, too.

Diversion: There was no way I could have known, that morning in my junior year of high school, when I woke up with the brand-new Styx song The Grand Illusion still playing in my head, that Dennis DeYoung would ask me, during the course of a converational interview, what my favorite Styx album was. And I could list a hundred more such anecdotes.

Now to those on the periphery of my life looking in, I may appear boring and staid. I write, spend time with family mostly, keep up with a few close friends, occasionally hang out with other writers, and write some more. I write features at work and fiction at home. When I'm done telling the stories of real people, I go home and invent people, and then tell their stories, too.

I cuddle a few cats, too.

Boring? Have you ever constructed realms from words and then peopled those realms with living, breathing people, and then shared THEIR grief, hopes, dreams, wishes, challanges and triumphs? I can assure you, it is far from boring.

There is nothing quite so hopping-up-and-down-on-my-chair exciting as reading feedback from another reader who laughed and cried with characters and booed and cheered them on.

Excuse me, but I have to get ready for church, a real church, with real people. 

But on the way up, I'll be working on the first draft for Tuesday's health story in The Herald-Ne3ws.