The sudden inspiration to write

How is it that I became a writer?... It simply happened, suddenly, in 1956, while I was crossing the football field on the way home from school. I wrote a poem in my head and then I wrote it down, and after that, writing was the only thing I wanted to do....

My transition from not being a writer to being one was instantaneous, like the change from docile bank clerk to fanged monster in B movies. Anyone looking might have thought I'd been exposed to some chemical or cosmic ray of the kind that causes rats to become gigantic or men to become invisible.

--Margaret Atwood, "A Path Taken, with All the Certainty of Youth"  in Writers on Writing: More Collected Essays from the New York Times, edited by Jane Smiley, p. 9.