We stopped at Sunset Bay on our drive along the Cape Arago Highway last Sunday. Anna played in the warm, shallow water while Julia took pictures. I sat, looking out over the ocean. Earlier, I had walked out along the rocks as far as I could manage without getting my sneakers soaked. Returning to the beach, I watched as other people walked out further than I did. They wore more suitable footwear.

After a few moments, I saw someone alone up on the rocks on the far end of the bay. I couldn't tell male or female. but I noticed this person's shirt - long sleeved to protect against the cold and a blue as vivid as the cloudless sky. Without the slight haze hugging the horizon, the shirt would have faded into the background. Black pants stood out against the rock, and dark hair formed a striking silhouette against the sky.

I thought about this image for a moment. It seemed like an ideal writing prompt. One could easily write a poem or a short story based on this lone figure. I'm a non-fiction writer, though, so instead I found myself wanting to ask questions: "What's your story?" "Why are you here on this rock?" "What are you thinking as you stare out over the ocean?" The answers are probably mundane, but they might be profound. I will never know.

And that got me thinking about fiction vs. non-fiction. A fiction writer would come up with an interesting story - that's the job of a fiction writer - and ninety-nine times out of a hundred that fictional story would be far more interesting than the truth. But what about that hundredth time? Did I see some one just hanging out at the beach or did I see a small part of a story that might never be told?

Last weekend, I attended my first Willamette Writers' Conference. As a newbie, I noticed many things that more seasoned writers might miss, or maybe just take for granted. Most notably, I discovered that most of the attendees fit into one of three categories:

The Retiree Writer—Fundamentally different from a "retired writer," which as far as I can tell doesn't exist, the Retiree Writer is someone who always wanted to write a book, and now has the time to do so. Usually female, 65 or older, this is the most common writer I met at the conference.

The Striving MFAs—Not all of them actually hold MFAs, but regardless of the degree, these are the aspiring career authors. They skew younger than the other attendees, usually in their twenties or thirties, almost always write fiction, and have a specific and well-researched genre. The Sci-Fi writers are mostly male, the Young Adult (YA) and Romance writers are mostly female, and the Fantasy and Mystery writers split down the middle somewhat. This group includes a small subset of "Striving J-School Grads" who write non-fiction.

The Storytellers—This is the most unusual group. They may be young or middle-aged, male or female. The one thing they all have in common is a great story to tell. One is a missionary living and working in Zimbabwe, another walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and another tried to write about the loss of her first husband for almost eight years before the story finally poured out of her. Often they start out writing a blog or short essays only to discover the outline of a book.

This was my group, and not to boast or anything but I found the most interesting people and interesting stories among them. Of course, I heard some great story ideas from the Retiree Writers and the Striving MFAs, but in both cases I saw people who had a compulsion to write and then found or created stories. The Storytellers are the ones who had the stories first and then felt compelled to write them.

The best part about being a Storyteller, though, is that once you start writing you discover all the other stories in your life. Build your craft and you can have something you never planned—a career as a writer.

You tell me: Do you read in the genre you write? A question posed by literary agent Nathan Bransford. The answer seems obvious: "Of course I do. Every writer does." Some better questions would be:

• Do you read in genres you don't write?
• Do you read in multiple genres?
• Do you you stretch yourself to find great writing and great storytelling?

As an example, here's a cross section of books I've read over the last year. This isn't a complete list. I've left out rereads - I love rereading a good book after setting it on the shelf for a couple of years - and only included those I've read for the first time:

• Revelations of Divine Love by Blessed Julian of Norwich
• Greywalker by Kat Richardson
• Your Life as Story by Tristine Ranier
• The Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch
• Push by Sapphire
• Crazy for God by Frank Schaffer

A memoir and a book about memoir writing - so yes I'm reading in my genre, but also two very different novels, a historical narrative, and a medieval theological work.

Here are a few I'm planning to read this summer:

• A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren
• Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood by Melissa Hart
• The Fence My Father Built by Linda Claire

Plus more books on craft, and lots of articles and essays to inspire my freelance work.

I was looking back over some of my old posts today, and I stumbled across this one:

Why Are We Still Talking About It

You can read it for yourself—please do, I think it's pretty good—but the gist of it is this: I banned a list of fourteen topics from this blog including Number 8: "Any Twitter feeds not from Iran." At the time, I had no interest in tweeting myself and never imagined I'd have a reason to change my mind.

Well now I'm on Twitter and by mentioning this fact, even somewhat in jest, I violated my ban. Worse, now that I'm tweeting I'll have to drop this ban altogether.

I apologize for breaking a promise I wouldn't have made if I knew better. Consider me being on Twitter as my penance.

My wife Julia started a fun little game with Anna about a year and a half ago. Anna had just figured out how to pout to try and get her way, so one day she was pouting and Julia started tapping her index finger and thumb together like a bird's beak.

"Tweet, tweet, tweet . . . plppbt!"

"Wa Dat?" Anna asked.

"That's a bird coming to poop on your lip," Julia replied.

Soon Anna caught on. One of us would pout—as a joke—and she'd tap her index finger and thumb together.

"Teet, teet, teet . . . plppbt!"

"What was that?" one of us would ask.

"Da a boid dunna poop on ya lip!" she'd reply with a big grin.

One day I noticed that Anna had her lip sticking way out, so I decided to take it to the next level:

"Squawk, squawk, squawk!" I said, flapping my arms.

Anna pulled her lip back in and covered her mouth.

"I think I hear a condor!" Julia said.

Soon Anna picked up on the condor too, and the first time I saw her flap her arms and squawk I practically fell over laughing.

So why do I bring this up today? Well, after last night's Mid-Valley Willamette Writers meeting, I finally gave in and signed up for a Twitter account. I put it off as long as I could, but if I'm going to pursue this writing thing as a career and not just a hobby I've got to network, and the place to network is Twitter.

So after a year of resistance I've started tweeting. I just hope that my first impression of Twitter wasn't accurate:

"Tweet, tweet, tweet . . . plppbt!"