Once Upon A Time

Don’t worry.  This isn’t about the hit TV show.  There are no spoilers here.

Recently I’ve been doing some interviews at various blogs, and one of the questions that gets asked frequently is how/when did you know you wanted to be a writer.  The truth is, I’ve pretty much always known.  In kindergarten, I learned to read using the books found here.  Since I learned to read using stories about animals, that was what I wrote.  Except, since I never do anything the short or easy way, I wrote plays instead.  While I can’t remember any of them or torture you with them, there was something very frustrating about them that I still remember to this day–nobody in my family could be convinced to act in them.  To this day I remain convinced that the world suffered a great loss because of this.

We never know where the spark of creativity is going to hit.  For some it comes through life’s heartaches and tragedies.  Others find it in the stars of the Milky Way, stretching overhead from one horizon to the other.  Wherever you find your creativity, there will always be those who cannot see the drive or passion behind it.  The trick is to never let that bother you, no matter how much it bothers you.  The only way to get from reading the word “See” to writing a novel that will entertain people is to keep putting more and more words together.  And always keep in mind what Mark Twain said, “A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”