When Writing Becomes YOU

• You'll watch tv a lot less.
• The bookstore will become a wonderland.  You will walk to the section your genre is housed in and stare at a fixed spot on the shelf imagining what will happen the day your book sits there.  You imagine what you might say.  "Have you read this amazing book?"  or  "I.  Wrote.  That."  "I can sign that for you.  If you want."  Until someone who works there, or shops there, or cleans up after hours walks by to ask if you are okay.  Or need help.  Or need an escort out.
• Your kids will become a lot more independent.  Like your three year old might learn how to climb to the top shelf of the pantry to feed himself.  And his big brother.
• Your house will be hideous, but you won't care because you'll never invite anyone over.
• Nor will you go out.  Much.  You'll find excuses why you can't meet your friends after dinner.  Or after the kids are in bed. Or for coffee.  (Don't they know that you write BEST when the sun comes up?  Is highest in the sky?  Is setting?  Has disappeared?)
• You'll miss an exit off the highway because your mc just whispered the perfect line in your ear and you've just figured out how to move past the writing block in a scene and now you'll have twenty more minutes to imagine what happens next as you drive on and on and on to the next exit just to turn around and get to where you were supposed to be getting.
• Your best friends know your name and your characters' names and your plot, BUT NOT what you look like or what your voice sounds like or what your house looks like or what kind of clothes you wear or if you have an accent or bad acne or what you used to be like before writing took over your whole universe.  But they understand your innermost dreams and cheer you on and answer questions for you at one in the morning or noon or off and on for three hours at a time, and they read your work and tear it to shreds just to help you perfect it until it sparkles more than a vampire in full sun so you can fold it into a paper airplane and send it off....  And they will be there when you are rejected or accepted or not replied to.  They will never ever say, "Why aren't you published yet?"  or "Didn't you start that book two years ago?"
• You will have more documents opened and saved on your laptop than you ever thought possible.  You will have notebooks and paper with frayed edges and pens and pencils and post-it notes scattered throughout the house so you will ALWAYS be prepared in case that moment of inspiration hits. 
• Your mom and husband will wonder why you never finished the 25 page master's thesis you were supposed to write while instead you wrote your first 116, 000 word novel only to rewrite it into a 65,000 word novel in addition to the 40,000 word novel you started to get through the writer's block that kept you from the 65,000 word novel for two months.  (They didn't understand that since starting your master's three or four or six years prior, and had two kids, that you were no longer interested in the topic of the paper and, well, fell out of touch with the university after your advising professor went on sabbatical and recommended you find a new advisor and that you WILL complete your master's.  One day.)
• Books will take on a whole new meaning.  You may enjoy them less.  OR MORE!
• You may choose a Kindle over a Nook just so you can annotate manuscripts on it.
• Some weeks you may enjoy writing your own scenes and characters more than you enjoy reading the ones you bought at the store or won online or uploaded on your Kindle from Amazon.  Because they're YOURS and you can't wait to find out how their story ends.  Because you love them and you have hopes past the moon that one day others will love them as much or more than you do.  Because they'll be on that shelf in the bookstore. And the manager and staff and customers will stand in long, long lines out the door and into the parking lot just to shake your hand and get your autograph and stand next to you saying cheese and to BUY YOUR BOOK!
• You may exercise less, eat a bit more, and gain a little weight, but feel good about it because your characters love you that way and so do your newest friends.

*MOST of these items have never really happened to me.  I'm just not saying which, except you need to know my kids are always 100% supervised and safe and well-fed and I am a careful driver that you need not fear if you pass me on the highway or any other road.