a few weeks ago i had a lovely chat with one of our tech writers, virgina– the self-proclaimed vixen of verbiage. virgina is amazing. i am not sure how old she is. i’d guess mid-40s. she’s everything i want to be when i grow up– strong, independent, opinionated. virginia has a passion for books and language that i so admire and relate to.

on this day, a few weeks ago, i asked virginia what she went to school for. she is a graduate of dartmouth in anthropology. i was stunned. i thought for sure she would have been some sort of english lit major. so then i asked her how she ended up a tech writer.

“i am fascinated by how things work,” was her reply. “i am not a writer, like you. i don’t have that burning need to write. i just like to read.”

awestruck, that was me. she called me a writer. i wasn’t so sure if she was correct in that label. did i have a burning need to write? am i a writer?

but so, i am laying in bed tonight. having finally put down the irving novel (one more chapter to go) and trying my best to drift off to sleep. i am laying there on that cusp between awake and lalaland. you know, that spot where you just know that sleep is soon to descend. when an idea came to me. i played with the idea. rolling it around on my brain. playing with phrasing and word choice. deciding how the story would unfold. since sleep was so near, i was going to try to put off the writing of it until the morning.

but the thought wouldn’t calm down. the words and phrases wouldn’t hush up.

so here i am, at midnight on a school night, burning.