This started the day we turned in our short stories to my English teacher, Mr. Magee, and it was still going on when he returned them days later. I went to class hoping he’d liked mine. He stood in front of the class holding the whole stack of stories and said, “Before I hand these back, I want to tell all of you about a student in the class whom I believe is good enough to become a published author. She has a lot of natural talent with creating characters and plot. She’s not so good with spelling and grammar, but she can learn those things.” Actually, I have a learning disorder called dyslexia which makes spelling and grammar pretty tough to learn, but I keep trying.

As Mr. Magee was saying this, I thought, Wow, I’d love to be a published author. I really should talk to this writer about how she does it so that I can learn to be a better write. But with my luck, whoever he’s talking about is some popular girl and she won’t even talk to me. Turned out, Mr. Magee was talking about me and I talked to myself all of the time. So it worked out great. I told stories to myself. I wrote them down.

And I kept right on doing it, through junior high and high school and college. Then, when I went to graduate school I finally sold a novel at the age of 28. It took me twenty years to make good on my plan to become a published author, but by then I realized it wasn’t about becoming famous. It was about being happy with who you are regardless of what other people think or do. It was also about writing stories for the sake of doing it well and enjoying it along the way. And I do. I love to write and hope to do it until I’m at least 98. Then maybe I’ll take up a new hobby. Skydiving, perhaps?