what's your farting kryptonite?

(i.e. what makes you fart?)

I know kryptonite actually refers to your weakness, but what if we tweaked it to mean the thing that makes you lose all control, drives you giddy-wild in the best possible way because you love it so stinking much?

Three guesses as to what my farting kryptonite is.

Okay it’s words. Words are my thing. I love words. Love. I love reading them, writing them, decorating with them, making art with them. (I do not love playing word games. Weird, I know.)

From a book I wrote 16 years ago:

I read hundreds, no, thousands, of books as a child. And I loved to write. I loved paper, pencils, books. I loved words—speaking them and listening to them, yes, but mostly reading and writing them.

I wanted to be a librarian. When I was 10, I made a card catalog of my books, taped labels on their spines, and shelved them in alphabetical order. I invited friends and family to check out books from my personal library.

I wanted to be a writer. I scrawled poems on scraps of paper starting in first grade. I was constantly making books—notebook pages stapled together, pictures cut from old JCPenney catalogs and glued on the pages, stories written beside the pictures.

Words are my medium. They always will be. And I feel super duper blessed to have found this out pretty early in life. (The poems I wrote in first grade were terrible, but I loved writing them.)

That doesn't mean I didn't try a bunch of other ways to make a living first. I started out as a nursing major in college (until the first video with blood in it), switched to elementary education, taught school for 2.5 years, then stayed home to have kids. And, eventually, to write.

Never mind that I worked in the school library and won a writing contest in 5^th grade and devoured books from age four until always.

Never mind that I got chosen to attend Power of the Pen (a writing conference) that year, and one of my teachers told my mom she expected me to become a published author someday.

Never mind that my speech was chosen to be read at the dedication of our new school building when I was in 8th grade.

Never mind that two of my jobs in college (besides telemarketing and the dish pit) were critiquing papers for one professor and writing curriculum for another.

I still didn’t get that I could make a living with words. I was 30 when I got my first book published. And I haven't looked back.

Oh, there's been failure, don't get me wrong. Three of my four published books are out of print. Once that happened, no publisher would take a chance on me. (I’m glad now, because those books are full of harmful beliefs I no longer hold.)

But now I’m 48 and, in the past three years, I’ve published five books of poetry, now this book, and I’m bursting at the seams with writing dreams.

And I want you to find the thing that makes you feel the way I feel about words and books.

That’s my dream for you.

So, tell me: what do you love, love, love?

p.s. This is an excerpt from my book, what makes you FART? Let me know if you’d like to read more, and I can hook you up with a signed copy.