I've never considered myself a writer. I know writers and I swear I am not like those people! You know the type: always sitting off to the side watching their life unfold, busily taking mental notes, anxious to get back to their dingy little rooms to *get it all down.* I've been an actor/director/scene designer for the theatre. I've painted beautiful wordless murals. I've written plays, but I didn't think that counted. I've written comix, but that's different! Now, I find myself four months into a science fiction novel. A dear writer friend of mine (one of THEM!) read my first chapter and gave me the bad news: "Kevin, I don't think you can say you're not a writer anymore." I was crushed. But I'm dealing.
I usually have a book I'm reading. My preferences are limited to individual works, sometimes authors (Chandler, Dickens, Palauniuk, etc.), not subject matter or genre. Before this SF novel my most serious prose project was a non-fiction book on shamanism.