When people ask me why I started writing, I have trouble answering because I never “started”; I have always have been writing.
In grade school, I wrote stories and poems and carried a notebook with me to write during classes (when I should have been listening) )and during recess. In high school, I wrote poetry and felt most at home in journalism and English classes. There, with amazing teachers to encourage me, I found my voice and “my people” on the school newspaper and yearbook staffs.
Writers are usually voracious readers, and I spent my childhood reading
any book or encyclopedia that was around – as well as the backs of cereal boxes or anything else that had written words that helped me learn and absorb the world. I read my familyʼs books. I read my babysittersʼ books. I read magazines in waiting rooms. College was spent working on various newspapers and magazines; getting that little thrill that all writers get
when one sees their name on a byline. Back then, we wrote on manual typewriters with correction tape and had no spell checking. Learning to craft thoughts into words was a skill not only useful for English classes, but for any course that required a paper or an essay test. I love technology and the accessibility it brings, but also value “old fashioned” creativity and
problem-solving. When my children were small, they loved the little
stories and rhymes I whispered to them as they fell asleep. We made up
elaborate back stories to their picture books and acted out various silly
scenarios which encouraged imaginative play. Although I have toyed
around with novels and technical writing, I always go back to the innocent joys of childhood. That is the magical time when anything and everything is possible. My children are so used to me singing and speaking to them in rhymes that my daughter will finish my sentences with one herself when the right word does not immediately come to me. In
