the moment when i decided to be a writer.

it had to do with notebooks and shoes.  i had just finished reading Harriet the Spy and i was eleven.  two things blazed upon my memory–the first was realizing the delight and danger of pen and paper and the second was Harriet throwing the shoe at her father in her despondency because he didn't or couldn't realize the depth of what had happened to her.  she had been outed, her notebook and thoughts violated and subsequently despised by her cohorts.  i knew as i began to write my first notebook and really started to look and record my world that i was born to a life of low pay and discouragement but one full of discovery.  i wasn't going to be a teacher or Perry Mason. i knew then writing was my calling.  i could make a world and give breath to the people i created.  the shoe story came later.  it was the critical thing that began my first published novel.  it took eight years of growing up to write my first unpublished novel which was full of youthful angst and my discovery of women's anatomy and my desire for it.  basically i was getting laid and writing about it in an overly dramatic novel of love and loss. the published novel arrived eleven years later and would be my third attempt and it had a pair of burning shoes in it and became The Wish List.  you'll have to read the book to discover the riddle of the burning shoes or not as you chose.  there you have it–paper, pen, leather and lighter fluid created the writer i am today.  sundays always seem right for confessionals.