I’m going to continue on the theme of threes, and of little revealing details. Here are three (completely true) eccentric personal traits that tipped me off to a possible career in creative writing:
When I lose contact with someone while chatting via IM or email, I immediately, automatically brainstorm several reasons for the radio silence. And they’re not rational reasons, oh no. I don’t think, “Oh, he must have been pulled away from his computer to deal with work stuff,” or “Oh hey, maybe her Gmail is crashing.” No. I think, “Maybe he was dive-bombed by a giant bird,” or “It’s the Apocalypse. Maybe it hit the States before Australia.”
I am irrationally afraid of the dark, and of milkshakes, and of drains. Respectively, because I’m afraid that ghosts who live in the dark will kill me violently, because I sometimes imagine tiny mice bones floating in my milkshakes, and because I think that tentacles may come out of drains and drag me down into the pipes.
I have a running monologue of songs, poetry, and replayed conversations in my head. All the time, alternating between profound and inane, and often involving scenarios in which I steal laptops to buy plane tickets to fly to Tokyo to become a jazz singer, except I don’t steal and I don’t sing jazz. This turns off only when I’m reading, which is why I love to read, and when I’m writing, which is why I need to write.
