I’d been saying I wanted to write for twenty years.  I’d said it so often and for so long that people who knew me didn’t even hear it anymore…  Even though I said it all the time and no one listened anymore when I did, the secreat was, I meant it.  I’d always meant it.  Actually, the real secret was stranger than wanting to write a book.  The real secret was that I already thought of myself as a writer.  I’d hardly written a word and I couldn’t think of a single idea for a book, but in my mind, I was a writer.  I’d been a writer since I was seven…  I was pregnant with book.  I could feel it kicking to get out.

From “Chosen by a Horse” by Susan Richards