The Writer.

My rhetoric teacher assigned us a short essay on our biggest influences in reading and writing. This is mine.

"I am writing a book which will be read by thousands, or, I modestly hope, by tens of thousands. So, please, get out of the room. I want to be alone. Writing normally calls for some kind of withdrawal." --Walter J. Ong

My parents tell a story about a time when they found me, at age two, sitting in my bed with a copy of “The Nose Book,” flipping the pages and reciting to myself the words I remembered them saying. While I didn’t get them all quite right (the words, that is), it was apparent that I had inherited Mom and Dad’s love of reading.

My childhood was lived in our apartment, at the park, and at the Fremont Public Library, with the round reading room, and that book about the chameleon who got trapped in a pickle factory. Some nights, my mother would tell us stories about a little girl named Annie, and her magic hat that could temporarily transform her into anything in the world. She didn’t have a choice as to what she would become, but she could always take the hat off and return if things got hairy.

My life was filled with literature from the day I was born.

While my tastes grew from The Nose Book to The Baby-sitters Club to The Top 500 Poems (ed. William Harmon), my own authorial instincts grew. I wrote short stories (about kittens), began novels (about mermaids), and composed poems (about camping equipment and summer storms). I think I always saw myself as a writer. But in 8th grade, Mrs. Monroe once scribbled a line or two of praise on a poem I had done for an assignment. And suddenly, with that one line, I wasn’t just a writer to myself, I was a writer to the world!

So I kept writing. I organized a binder for all my poetry, and add to it at least monthly. I became a religious journaler, and my collection of journal volumes is still growing. I started a blog [this one!] as a simultaneously more public journal, where I can also publish poems and the few short stories I attempt (mostly so that James or Valerie Best will read and critique/validate them). A year ago, I began a short novel, but, true to the cliché, have tabled it until further notice.

I saw Mrs. Monroe a year after I graduated high school. I was working at Staples; she was buying pencils. I told her I was going to major in Theatre Education. She smiled. “I always thought you’d be a writer.”

I guess I still can be.