I’m not crazy…really!

I’m not crazy, I’m just a writer.

Sometimes I think I should have the above words printed on business cards to hand out to strangers who might not understand some of my more, um, illogical behaviors. Could come in handy sometimes.

Yes, I hear voices in my head. Sometimes they wake me up in the middle of the night. Sometimes I talk back to them. They’re just my characters talking to me, telling me their story. I’m not crazy, I’m just a writer.

By now, my husband’s used to the fact that I sometimes burn dinner or get lost driving home, because my mind is stuck on my story. If people see me on the street or in a store and I walk right past without acknowledging them – I’m not ignoring you, I just didn’t see you because I’m in my story world right now.

Sometimes we have to stay seated at our table in a restaurant long after we’ve paid the bill, because I’m eavesdropping on an interesting conversation at the next table. I’m taking notes, because that would make such a good idea for a story.

When I was working on Always a Bridesmaid, my first story for Indulgence, I made my husband stop the car so I could take pictures of a house in a particularly ritzy neighborhood near us. We were both sure neighborhood patrol would call the police on us for hanging out in front of this house so long, but it was the perfect house for Mike and Stephanie, the hero and heroine of the book, to live in.

I’ve been known to change dinner menus at the last minute. “What is this?” my husband will ask, surveying the table skeptically as he studies some unfamiliar, Romanian stew.

“It’s what Mike and Stephanie ate in the scene I wrote today.”

Poor man. He just nods and sits down to eat. At least it’s not burned.

I tell people I talk to my dogs when I’m home alone working. The two pooches are an attentive audience for me to read scenes from my work in progress or try out snatches of dialogue. If I didn’t have the dogs, I’d have to talk to myself.

But that doesn’t mean I’m crazy. I’m just a writer.

********

Cindi Myers writes (and sometimes worries her family) in the mountains of Colorado. Always a Bridesmaid  is a story about what happens when two people who think they have more important things to do than fall in love get together and try to fight their instant attraction. The two end up as roommates and learn what they think they know about love is no match for what they feel in their hearts.