"When I grow up, I'm going to..."
I have been writing for about five or six years, and when people ask me how I got started, I always tell them about the time I met Korean-American author Helie Lee who said to me, "You've got a story to tell, you should write it," and so I did. We were living in Costa Rica at the time and I wrote a children's novel that was loosely based on our experiences there.
So, that's where I had always thought my writing dream began. But the other day when I was cleaning out my closet, I came across a box of my old journals - about twenty or thirty of them, all chock-full of Tales from the Life of Jennifer. I thumbed through the pages and found several comments from various ages saying "When I grow up I want to be a writer." When I was in seventh grade, I'd written, "I will live in Switzerland and write books," and in high school I said "I am going to live in New York and write the skits for Sesame Street." In college I started working on my art, painting and drawing, and I decided that I wanted to write and illustrate children's picture books.
But somehow, perhaps around my twenties or so, the publication dream hid itself away from me. I had great adventures, pursued other desires, and continued to chronicle my own life over those years, but it never occurred to me to write for anyone other than myself.
I'm so glad the childhood dream presented itself to me again. All in good time, I suppose.
Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?
So, that's where I had always thought my writing dream began. But the other day when I was cleaning out my closet, I came across a box of my old journals - about twenty or thirty of them, all chock-full of Tales from the Life of Jennifer. I thumbed through the pages and found several comments from various ages saying "When I grow up I want to be a writer." When I was in seventh grade, I'd written, "I will live in Switzerland and write books," and in high school I said "I am going to live in New York and write the skits for Sesame Street." In college I started working on my art, painting and drawing, and I decided that I wanted to write and illustrate children's picture books.
But somehow, perhaps around my twenties or so, the publication dream hid itself away from me. I had great adventures, pursued other desires, and continued to chronicle my own life over those years, but it never occurred to me to write for anyone other than myself.
I'm so glad the childhood dream presented itself to me again. All in good time, I suppose.
Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?