Busy busy busy!

Many of you who know me see me as a somewhat aloof person, somebody who sits in the corner, doing my lace or my reading, and not really jumping into the conversation. Hello, I'm a NERD, and I definitely look and act the part. But on the phone, I turn into a completely different person.

I have spent the whole morning on the phone, calling various places in and around Charlotte, NC, doing research for my current writing project. And it has been a BLAST! I loved it. I got tons of information, I got to talk to a lot of people who wouldn't have been half as nice to me if they had met me face-to-face, and they're all going to email or mail me even MORE information. I even had one little girl who was tickled to death to be talking to a "real writer," asked me what my novel was about, and the more I told her, the more excited she got about sending me information.

How cool is that?

I know what it is. God has given me many many MANY gifts in my life. But a beautiful face and body was not one of them. Plus, I am often intimidated by talking to other people face-to-face; when I was a kid, I had a terrible stammer and that may have had something to do with it. And maybe not. I still stammer occasionally, even today, but I have NEVER really stammered on the phone, even when I was a kid. Go figure.

But the guy I'm talking to on the phone? He can't see me. It's like a mask, and I can be anybody I want to be on the phone. I can be brave, and funny, and charming, because it's anonymous. I'm like Spiderman, only without the icky spider thing, and armed with a fountain pen and a phone book, rather than cool superpowers and webslinger gadgets.

and then again, maybe it was just cool because I was making progress on the research for my story. I love writing, even the "dull" research bits. I feel excited by today's work so far; it makes me feel alive, invigorated.

Yes, I'm crazy. come on, it's not like it's a surprise to any of you, right?