What inspired you to become a writer? It was during my second interview that the question came up, and it has haunted me ever since. Unlike many writers, I can’t point to a time when I was seven and plopped down in front of my father’s typewriter and thought, this is it. I want to be a writer.
In fact, I distinctly remember showing up at 8AM for typing class in High School and thinking ‘Please God don’t make me have to type for a living.’ I hated pounding on those keys with my fingers half frozen in the winter and stiff from the heat in the summer.
But I digress…
There wasn’t a particular moment when I thought I was headed for the sado-masochistic journey called authorship, it was more a cumulative effect. I’d always told stories, rewritten books, movies and nightmares to have an ending that satisfied me. And to lull myself to sleep, I expanded on ideas to entertain me–which sometimes meant I was awake until the wee hours of the morning in my own fantasy world.
So the storytelling bit I would cop to at a very young age, it’s the writing part that is shocking. I really, really didn’t like English and still don’t. Part of it lies in taking someone else’s work and picking it apart and putting words in their mouths. Not my idea of a good time. Nor for that matter were the books they made us read. Bleah!
Originally I intended to draw. Charcoal and watercolor, maybe a colloage or two. I loved art. Still do for that matter. My mother is an artist, so I come by it naturally.
It wasn’t until 1997, during a hellicous 2 hour commute to my employer that I considered actually challenging my brain to tell a story with words. That first book will never see the light of day again. The second one A Christmas Village got published. It is a process and still a challenge. I still rewrite books, movies and nightmares, but that’s only in my head. For my books, I tap into my creative well and fish out characters who entertain me and still write for the mental challenge.
Even after 15 books getting the words right isn’t easy.
STARS!! WHICH DO I READ FIRST? LOL