When do you know?

For me, it happened quite a long time ago, but I more often than not I gave it up after a few attempts. I have always managed to fabricate stories in my head. Between that and my vivid imagination, I always thought of myself to be just strange. And I always blamed my peculiar nature on the amount of books that I devoured. And still do.

When I was younger, my mother always blamed my lack of alertness on my dreamy nature. My head was always in the clouds, she would say. My dreams were always vivid and my nightmares even worse.

But this time, the need to grab a piece of paper and put my thoughts on it was different. This time was stronger. The need to write, to look for answers, to put every little detail where it belongs was so powerful that I woke me up during the night.

Recently I went to a barbecue where we were discussing ideas for novels. Someone said that it is easy to get ideas to develop into stories. I agree it can be easy. But the hard part is to take that one line idea and transform it into a novel. The ability to work and develop a concept is the difference between a creative mind and a writer. And that was the moment when I finally understood why this time it was different. It was because I accepted the way my mind worked. And while I might sound like I am on the verge of going once and for all full on crazy, it’s the first time in forever when I am truly happy: in that moment when I reach for my Mac to write even a line, the moment when a piece of the puzzle falls into place and I just need to reach for something to write it down (sometimes that something is a tissue), when a line of a dialogue just comes to mind.

A couple of nights ago I awakened to write this idea that came to me while dreaming. So with one eye open, I reached for the notebook that is my faithful companion and penned a sentence. And then I burst into laughter. It was 3 am and I woke up to create a tale. And it did not even made sense. It was just the plot. The main story line and I knew that sleep was gone now. Because I started developing the story line, adding characters and changing details that did not feel part of the story, adding personalities to characters. It was insane that even in my dream I stopped everything that happened because I did not like how the story developed. I remember having in the back of my mind the thought that the way the characters spoke and their action were not believable or realistic. It felt like I was a film director and my movie was my own dream that I would transform into a story that people would read. So three hour later, I had both of my main characters, the antihero, the main story line, the order of the events and at least three or four different endings. And if there were any doubts the moment when I put the pen down, and realised that I just built an entire plot in less than three hours, was the moment when I understood that I could do this.

So this is for that little girl inside me that feels sad because she was ignored for so long.