There’s this thing about being a writer.

It requires privacy, solitude, time—for me. The actual act of creating a story/character/scene/ line when you are hidden away running that mind film behind your eyelids, trying to type as fast as the images appear might read as as selfish—this intimate, secretive dance between your imagination and your keyboard.

I feel almost apologetic when I’m in the zone, lost in a world that doesn’t really exist. It is definitely unexplainable to a non-writer, but it’s something I accept as a natural part of my everyday. The reality that I am never not writing. When I am stirring the pasta sauce and running possible replies in my character’s voice? I’m writing. When I am feeding the chickens and figuring out how to describe a cloudy day, without calling it a cloudy day? I am writing. When I am staring into space, ignoring you? I am one hundred percent writing.

As such there’s a trade-off. The Universe demands that every little introvert pull on her extrovert jumpsuit, haul out the soapbox and step up at least once during every moon cycle.

These are the days that you flip the switch and everything changes. If you’re lucky, you’ll be among your people and they’ll understand your brain, your language, that tapping code whose pauses bring such anguish. And if it’s another kind of gathering, a different day in which you speak to people on the other side of the tapping code— people who are on the devouring side of the creating—well then, buck up buttercup. And maybe, reach for the brightest shade of lipstick you can find.

THIS IS A NOVEL IDEA, THE VIRTUAL BOOK EVENT HOSTED BY JEREMY LOGAN WITH LINDA SANDS SPEAKING TO AUTHOR WILLIAM RAWLINGS ABOUT HIS NEW BOOK, THE LIGHTHOUSES OF GEORGIA.