Apparently an interviewer once asked Flannery O’Connor why she wrote, and she said, “Because I am good at it.” Embarrassingly enough, I first started writing, or started to think of myself as someone who wanted to write, simply because I was praised by my teachers for writing. And I really liked to read. And writing […]
I began writing out of a deep, almost mystical bafflement. I did not understand what story was. I swooned over the implicit confidence of directly narrated causation. The idea that an author had figured out that a character did x because of y which occurred because of z was entirely beyond me. I lived in a buzzing hive of multiple possible […]
I started writing as a young child. I remember reading the Box Car Children and later The Outsiders and those stories got me writing. As a kid, I was always making up stories, wanting to fix the bad things I saw, the problems. I think you can be born with a voice for words like […]
As a child I read everything I could, from books at the breakfast table to the labels on shampoo bottles. So, as a present for my eighth birthday, my parents joined a book club for me. My heart leaped when the quarterly magazine dropped on the doormat and I could choose and order a book. […]
I began writing stories as a very young child because I loved the places that books took me in my mind. The possibilities of fiction filled me with wonder and hope. As I matured, I began to realize the great social value that stories hold, and how essential the presence of socially-conscious art is in […]
I was a very shy child, as I suppose many writers are. I had a great fear of being misunderstood. My thoughts expressed aloud always sounded strange. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I read a lot and used words that surprised both children and teachers. So, I’d pause before speaking and often, end […]
Why do I write? If I didn’t I’d have to clean the house and play bridge, both of which I hate. But seriously I write because I have to write. I have always written and can’t imagine not doing it. I told myself stories as a small child. I wrote movie scripts for myself when […]
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