Attached Link: From the Writers mailing list:

Writer's Digest, August 2004, page 16, suggests that you might be a writer if:

1. You include an SASE with all correspondence -- even letters to your mother.

2. You can't resist pointing out grammatical errors in restaurant menus.

3. Your wife says she'll kill you if you whisper, "That was the end of the first
   act" during a movie one more time.

4. You can recite return postage rates for London, New York, Los Angeles and
   Guam.

5. In a house fire, you'd save your copy of Writer's Market, then your
   grandmother's jewelry.

6. During church sermons, you find yourself thinking, this could be tighter.

7. You couldn't balance a checkbook if your life depended on it, but your
   submission log is cross-referenced three different ways and goes back to 1986.

8. You decide four sentences into any novel that the author is inept.

9. You fall in love based on proper use of syntax.

10. When your family suggests a Disney World vacation, you say, "How about
    stopping on the way to see the farmhouse where Walt Whitman was born?"

11. You feel sex ranks a distant second to the sensation of holding a felt-tip
    pen in your hand.

12. Your answering machine says, "Hi, I'm not here right now. Please leave a
    query and a synopsis of your proposed message, and I'll let you know whether to
    call back."

13. When you nail a sentence, you're pretty sure you know how Moses felt parting
    the Red Sea.

So what's your favorite expression of the writing life? You might be a writer if
. . .

You might be a writer if you take pictures like this:

 

The Photograph

Walking in the woods today, after a late fall rain
I saw a sight so magical, I knew I'd never see it again.
The thunder and the lightening, had long since rumbled past
The rain had stopped a while ago, the sky was overcast.

Jumping in the puddles, and shaking all the trees
She sends the droplets flying to ride the playful breeze.
I begin to think in couplets, a word, a phrase, a rhyme
Then I recall the camera I've brought along this time.

She's an exotic combination, this child of my child,
A mix of heavenly angel, and magic faerie wild.
She has stopped to stare in wonder, at a single shining drop,
It has traveled down across a leaf, but at it's tip has stopped.

I reach back to grab the camera, safe within my pack
I shake my head and sigh to see, what's in the hand that I pull back.
I've left the camera nestled inside the carry sack,
Instead I've grabbed a crayon and a napkin from our snack

She squats and gazes awestruck by the drop upon the leaf
Her tiny hand is held palm upward waiting underneath.
The enraptured concentration on that tiny gamine face
The child, the drop, the tiny hand, such magic in this place.

The entire scene before me is etched upon my mind,
By a single ray of sunshine, that creates a gold outline.
It's the magic in this moment, this scene I want to share.
"Get the camera!" screams my brain, but still I stand and stare.

I turn again to grab the camera, but as I turn back around,
The leaf has dropped from leaf to palm, then onward to the ground.
That single ray of sunlight is lost within the glow
Of a thousand of its brethren putting on a show.

I tuck the camera gently back into it's resting place
She turns and grins and waves to me, THAT look upon her face
So innocent and sweet she smiles, While vibrating in her glee
She pulls back a dripping branch and fires it at me!

Later while she's napping, chasing faeries in a dream,
I pull out the paper napkin, and the notes there of the scene.
Did you enjoy the journey, as we traveled down the path,
To the final destination, this verbal photograph?

You might be a Gothic Literature writer if you  look at a painting and say, "Poe could have described it better."

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