I like to deliver unintentional soliloquies. I like that I stumbled on the correct spelling of “soliloquies” on the first try.
I like to deliver unintentional soliloquies. More often than not, when in one-on-one conversations, I start to wax poetic and verbally play out little skits that I have running, nearly constantly, through my mind. At the end of these diatribes, speeches, scenes, verbose entreaties the recipient invariably asks me if I write. I’m not sure why this is but I’m assuming that it has something to do with the graphic and imaginative way in which I just described their future life and eventual grisly horrible death (or similar). I therefore seem to have an active imagination which should be harnessed by writing.
I don’t have an active imagination. Or at least in comparison to the creatives I work with every day.
I was out to dinner last night and I got the glassy look in my eyes that signifies a story, told it, was asked if I was a writer, and then was asked if I could then tell my guest about the past, and everything leading up to the present. Then this person told me that I had a little time to think about it as they went to the bathroom.
I don’t need time to think about it.
And that is why I am not a writer. Writers have a plan in mind, an outline, and I’ve never had any such thing. I’ve written, or attempted to write, stories all my life. And I never have an idea before doing so, I just start, write, and then stop. They all end up being short stories, everything wrapped up in a neat little package in under 10 pages. A novel seems so unnecessary. Why do I need so many pages to say she was born, she lived, she died?