The Peculiarities Part 1

There are voices in my head. I am a writer, of course there are voices in my head! Those ideas and characters, all struggling for my attention. Sometimes they is a pain, but at other times I enjoy them. They keep me company into the long night hours. They emerge in midday as I pound away at my keyboard. I stop typing, rise, and begin to act out the scene I was writing. My roommate, a math major, has been genuinely disturbed by these voices as he plays his life-sucking Facebook games. I cannot keep them in. The creative voices must be expressed! The creative voices are the peculiarities commonly exhibited in the writer. Here are two REALLY common ones:

One: There are times that I just start talking to myself. I do it in public. I do it in private. I don't always act out the scenes I am considering, but I have talked through entire pages worth of dialogue between two or more characters while walking back from the Dining Commons. I am entirely conscious of the world around me, but I am also entirely conscious of the world in my mind. Luckily, there has only been a few times when they've clashed.

Two: I have a disorder. I call it ORAU disorder (Obsessive Random Accent Usage.) I slip into accents, commonly Scottish or Irish ones, randomly during conversation. I also use accents when answering questions. For example, the lady at the checkout asks me, "do you want a receipt?"

"Aye," I answered. My Mom had to tell the cashier that I was saying "yes" in Scottish. I mean, what has the world come to? How have we reached such a deprived stage in our existence where the cashier at Wal-Mart doesn't know what "aye" means? It's preposterous! There are times when I purposely use accents while talking. A writer friend once dared me to speak in a Scottish accent for a week. I did it. Most of the time, however, I do not intend to use an accent and I just slip into it. I have talked to some other writers and they experience generally the same thing. Some writers need a trigger (someone else speaking an accent or a thought connected with an accent), others are more like me and just slip into the accents.

And now, dear reader, you know my dark, secret disorder. Have a good week. Part 2 will be released on Friday.