My interest in writing was preceded by a love for reading. Until 8th grade, I hated reading—and writing and arithmetic and anything having to do with school. I was a rebel. In fact, that very trait got all this started.
One day slinking through the halls on a class-skipping mission, I came across a tattered old book sprawled on the floor. The cover had been torn off. On the title page had been stamped “NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION!” Under the heading, the stamp explained the book was some sort of trial printing and should have been destroyed. Resentment swelled in my adolescent heart at the audacity of some unknown, unseen jerkwad actually trying to stop me from doing what I wanted. It did not occur to me that I did not “want.”
“I’ll show them!” I thought. I pocketed the story, snuck out behind the school, sat at the foot of an old oaktree—and started reading. That night in bed, I dug it out of my book bag and continued. When I finished, I thought to myself, “Good Lord. There’s a whole WORLD in there!” That was it; I was hooked.
The book was The Pigman, by Paul Zindel.
It wasn’t long before I developed a nagging desire to create worlds of my own. “Jaws” came out, and I saw the movie. Someone told me the book was always better than the movie, so of course I read it. Inspired by Peter Benchley, I wrote a shameless knockoff of the book entitled “Teeth.” HA! My parents offered the obligatory praise, and so I continued writing from time to time, as interest and time permitted.
In high school, my writing career took a hit when a visiting author read a short story of mine and ripped it to shreds. Though the flame was smothered, it did not die. There was yet a coal inside me, just waiting for the right breeze to come along and coax the dream once more the flame.
In college, that breeze presented itself when my music history professor, Dr. Richard Shadinger, offered the class complete freedom in how we presented our term papers. I chose Christian Bach, and I made it a STORY! Dr. Shadinger was delighted with the tale, and submitted it to the English department. It won the Crabb writing award that year. Imagine the humiliation of the runner-up English major as this gangly long-haired ginger bumbles onto the stage to accept the award. “Christian” is lying around the house somewhere, but at the moment I can’t put my hands on it. Most frustrating.
A zillion short stories later, I finally wrote my first novel, Survivors. It was bliss, it was hell. It was everything I never knew I wanted in life. So I started another one, Drawer #7.
And I see no end to writing in sight.
See you in story world!
