When I was six years old, my mother bought some blank exercise books for me. It was her hope that I would turn out to be artistic, and the purpose of the books was to teach me how to "draw outsde the lines."
Within about two weeks, I had filled all three exercise books. However, it was not with the drawings my mother hoped for-- it was with words.
To this day, I believe she was a little disappointed.
My Life As A Writer has been a mixed bag. In a sense, you could argue that I have been in denial about the writing life.
Although I wrote from a very early age, it wasn't ever a childhood dream to "become a writer." I had the usual childhood aspirations-- and even some of my more esoteric "what I'm gonna be when I grow up's" (like being a stamp dealer) did not include writing.
And yet I "knew" that I was a writer.
When I was in my teens, I briefly muttered some words to the effect that I enjoyed writing, but my intent was weak and the idea was easily tossed aside by my mother's insistence that writers were "flakes and people who had no direction in their lives, and besides, you can't make a proper living that way-- and people in our family do not live in poverty."
So I restricted my writing activities to journals, and to writing lengthy letters to friends and family. Friends who often told my mother what a good writer I was. She beamed at her "coolness by association," and then would say "don't give him any ideas."
