What if one day, somebody came up to you and said something like this:

               'I couldn't put it down.'

               'You made me laugh out loud!'

               'You made me cry.'

               'That image you used - it was so right, so striking.'

               'I really hated that villain.'

               'It was as if I was there.'

               'I felt lost when I'd finished it.'

What if you had created these reactions, through the power of your words?

What if you've always had the urge to tell a tale, the need to find the precise words to express emotion and experience?

What if you want to explore your memories, your identity, your relationships, good and bad?

What if you need to come to terms with past experience by recasting it as art?

What if you hate your job/you don't want to die unknown/you want your children and grandchildren to know what it was like to be you/you cannot bear not to have something to read near at hand at all times/stories are your inner life - characters, plots and fine descriptive phrases shoulder their way into your mind constantly?

What if you're willing to learn, to embark on a never-ending apprenticeship, acquiring and refining your skills through practice and perfectionism, through dealing with rejection, through never giving up?

What if ... you really are a writer?

They were madmen; but they had in them that little flame which is not to be snuffed out.

Pierre Renoir