Things I Spend Way Too Much Time Thinking About

Thing 1: What would it be like to have someone else's mind?

Wouldn't it be fascinating to mind swap with someone for a day? I sure think it would! I would love to experience someone else's processing for a while, just to see how different or similar our minds are. And I bet I can learn a lot about myself from being in someone else's mind. I'd finally have something to compare my "crazy" too.

Thing 2: If I ever write a novel set in modern-day, will my characters use cell phones and/or social media?

Definitely something to consider.

Thing 3: Would I have liked this book more or less if I'd read it in my own voice?

One of my favorite books I "read" last year was The Chilbury Ladies Choir. I listened to the audiobook while I was in Lake Tahoe. The book has several narrators and is one of the only books written in letter/journal format that I've really liked. The readers were fantastic, but they gave completely different voices to the characters than I probably would have in my own head. This made me wonder how different my reading experience would have been if I'd read the actual book. Would I have loved it as much?

Honestly, I'll never know. I can't undo those voices now and give them my own. This is something I think about anytime I choose to listen to an audiobook instead of reading the book myself.

Thing #4: Are the animals acting strange?

Whenever there's a natural disaster, there are anecdotes of animals behaving strangely right before it hits.

When I was in elementary school, I bought a book from the book fair about animals that warned people of danger or saved their lives - dogs that knew their owners were going to have heart attacks and lizards that performed CPR (okay, maybe not... I don't remember the specifics).

It's a habit of mine to watch the animals. So yesterday when hundreds of birds were flying over IHOP in a disorganized frenzy, I couldn't help but think of all the possible disasters they could have been predicting.