The Secret Life of Brian Katcher

 A coworker once gave me the nickname 'The Lion.' I like to assume it was because of my commanding and masculine presence, but in reality, it's because I'm a pacer, much like a lion in captivity. Whenever my mind gets going, I can't sit still. I'm constantly coming up with new plots, scenarios, characters, and ideas (instead of, apparently, working). 

A car salesman once made a joke about my pacing. It cost him a free automatic starter.

Remember that James Thurber classic, 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty'? It was about a nebbishy man who would constantly fantasize himself into exciting adventures: a soldier, a cat burglar, a surgeon.

I think we've all done that. Imagined ourselves as the hero, the lothario, the champion...or the guy who burned down this damn McDonalds where you get written up for taking a drink of water in the kitchen.

But as the years went by, those weird dreams I had started coalesce into plotlines, stories, entire books. Instead of picturing myself as the unlikely hero, I created my own characters out of my mind. My alter egos suddenly began to take shape on paper. 

I wonder if being a writer means you have a mind that is always running too fast. Maybe I never would have tried to write a book, had I not spent afternoons imagining riding off into the sunset with the cute girl in the salad prep area, after I shoved my supervisor's face in the deep fryer.