Many of us are writers, but only a few of us are Natural Writers. You can tell I am a Natural Writer because, in the video of my birth, I emerge from the womb with my dominant arm flailing, knowing it is being deprived of the tool it has never physically held. “WHERE IS MY WRITING IMPLEMENT?!” you can hear in my screams, if you have the sensitivity of a Natural Writer.

As a Natural Writer, every day I must disgorge a symphony of words. This ritual is at once euphoric reverie and necessary bodily function. If I cannot perform it, my hands tremble with the aches of withdrawal. I cannot breathe unless my thoughts are erupting from me like a volcano of similes!

My craft keeps me up at night. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve wanted to fall asleep but my brain insisted on generating ideas—a Natural Writer’s default state of being. Time after time, I had to turn on the light, reach for my distressed leather journal and elaborate fountain pen, and write, for a Natural Writer never wants to lose her ideas. O, what I wouldn’t give for an uninterrupted slumber!

You could say many things enable my status as a Natural Writer, but most of all, it is my searing empathy. Whenever a person in my vicinity experiences a surge of glee, pool of dread, or ember of anger, I cannot help but feel it all. That is what drove me to be a writer—not that I ever had a choice, being born a Natural Writer—because if you can gather the feelings of the world, you owe humanity your words.

Perhaps one of the funniest inside jokes among us Natural Writers—though there really are very few of us—is that everyone assumes we have wonderful handwriting. Guffaw! No doctor can hold a candle to my chicken scratch when I am trying to preserve my creativity! But yes, when the time calls for it I do have beautiful penmanship because the manuscripts of Natural Writers are often worshipped.

For a Natural Writer, school is constant titillation. As if I’d have it any other way! I loved learning, smelling every page, cradling every thought. I could easily fool my teachers into thinking I had mastered any material because my writing was unique and distracting; they were so dazzled they wouldn’t have noticed a lack of content!

Of course, there never was a lack of content. I absorbed knowledge everywhere I could and would not allow myself to produce anything short of brilliant. You might be surprised to learn that anxiety and self-punishing are common symptoms of being a Natural Writer. Although, can you say symptoms are “common” if the condition itself is so rare?

I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain what it is to be a Natural Writer—if you haven’t experienced it, you will never know what it is. But if anyone could explain it, it would be me, a Natural Writer.

Natural Writers tend to be introverted, but please know we cherish our human relationships! I derive inspiration from interacting with my loved ones, so I have to see you all, even if I don’t want to. Although today I cannot meet; I am writing. Worry not; as long as I am writing, I am living.