- You know Newbery has only one R.
- Someone tells you they “just finished a book,” and you automatically think they finished writing a book, when, in truth, they finished reading a book.
- You volunteer to drive in someone else’s car pool, just so you can listen to the kids’ conversations and keep your “ear” fresh.
- No matter what horrible ordeal you go through, in the back of your mind you’re always thinking: “I could put this in a story.”
- You meet someone new and think: “Boy, is she weird. What a great character!”
- Sitting in church, you make notes about the story you’re working on in the margins of the bulletin, when you should be listening to the sermon.
- You know when the elementary school year starts and ends, even though your own kids are in college.
- Your friends frequently spot you with your knees up around your ears, hunched in one of the tiny chairs in the children’s section of the library.
- You have a narrator in your head who tells you what’s happening in your own everyday life…in the third person.
- You secretly analyze the structure, voice, and plot while reading your kids a bedtime story.
Published in “Once Upon A Time” magazine
