I really love to write.  And I don’t mean the process of telling a story through words recorded on paper (although I do love that), but I mean the actual ACT of writing itself.  I love the feel of a pen in my hand, love moving it across a piece of paper to form letters, words, sentences, paragraphs.  I love seeing my handwriting fill up a page, making something that was once pure and clean messy and complicated, but so much more valuable.

Sometimes, before I began writing fiction and poetry, I would feel this urge to pick up a pen and just write, though often I didn’t have any purpose, so I didn’t write anything at all.  I still get those impulses now.  I’ll be sitting at work and will have a few slow moments and in my head, suddenly, the desire will strike.  I’ll wish desperately in the moment that I could pull out my notebook and form words across the page, even if I don’t say anything.

There’s something so immensely satisfying about flipping through my full notebooks, seeing my familiar writing.  No one in the world writes exactly like me.  When I write lowercase “g”s I’m often going so fast that I don’t form a complete loop at the top.  And my uppercase “I”s are often written in such a hurry they could be mistaken for “N”s if the page was turned 180 degrees.  And there are a million other things about my handwriting that when combined mean I’m the only person in the world to write like I do.

I think that is amazing.

I wonder now if my love of the Act of writing led me to write fiction.  Was that a direction I was always headed in and I didn’t know it?  Were my diligent note-taking skills in high school and college just precursors to the notebooks that would one day carry my heart and soul on their pages?  Were the urges to pick up a pen I felt for twenty-four and a half years before writing Twenty-Five trying to tell me my destiny?

That I really should be a writer?

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Lua posted an interesting exercise on her blog a few days or weeks ago, I can’t be sure exactly which.  It goes along really well with these thoughts, so here it is:

The Rules:

Write down the following, snap a picture (or scan the document), post it, and tag others.

1.Name/Blog Name.
2. Right handed, left handed or both?
3. Favorite letters to write?
4. Least favorite letters to write?
5. Write: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
6. Write in caps:
CRAB
HUMOR
KALEIDOSCOPE
PAJAMAS
GAZILLION
7. Favorite song lyrics?
8. Tag 7 people.
9. Any special note or drawing?

I wrote this down in the actual notebook I’m carrying around at the moment, where I write whenever I get a chance.  It has random chapters and short stories and pieces of poetry along with driving directions and notes from classes and seminars and meetings about weddings.  I love my notebook.

Note: I didn’t do #8- tagging people.  I’m not really sure how that works on a blog.  I mean, I know how to add tags to each post, but does it mean I should link to these people’s blogs?  And disclaimer on #7- favorite song lyrics- I actually just wrote down the lyrics playing at the moment I got to that step!  Sorry, I guess I don’t have one song or set of lyrics that sticks out enough for me to call it a favorite.