Why I write, such as it is...

Why I write.  In all actuality, it was probably fated, acquired through the genetics passed down from my parents.   My mother read fiction, and for entertainment my father read the encyclopedias, from the front cover of A to the back cover of Z…  Repeatedly.  When I was a youngster my dad read to me extensively.  I could always expect a new Little Golden Book on Birthdays, at Christmas and even Easter.  As a result of that exposure I learned to read at an early age, and voraciously consumed anything I could lay my hands on, even the backs of cereal boxes.

A writer friend of mine tells me that Reading Rainbow inspired her.  I'm from a different, slightly older generation of kids that predate Reading Rainbow and Sesame Street.  For me, it was Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Green jeans, Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose.  I spent time each morning with the Captain before setting off to school.   There was almost always story time, how many of us can could forget about Ping the Duck, or Mike Mulligan and his steamshovel Mary Anne.

I attended elementary school in a school named for poet, author and humorist Eugene Field, yes more of that whole fate thing I mentioned earlier.  It was around the time when I was in second grade when the school was visited by a author, no I haven’t a clue who it was.  He spoke to us about Eugene Field.  I think that was the moment I realized that someone had to write the books and the stories that I read, and that I could tell stories as well.   Maybe someone would read them.

A local newspaper sponsored an annual junior journalism page and printed the best submissions from the city's grade school kids.  It became a yearly event to see my name and words that I had written printed in the paper.

When I was twelve or thirteen years old I acquired an ancient Royal typewriter, it was probably a dollar purchase at a yard sale.  I named it the John Boy special after the machine that John Walton Jr. used on the long running television program The Waltons.  That would be another hint as to the time period in which I found it.  Although they were required school supplies, a t least I wasn't trying to compose on Big Chief tablets.

I do remember pounding out a hundred or so pages of a post apocalyptic story and the few survivors as they tried to rebuild society.  The disaster had been caused by the release of a bio-engineered plague.  Then Stephen King released his version, "The Stand". Needless to say, I was more than a little pissed.  I burned my story, and scattered the ashes to the wind. That would have been one of the last times that I had considered becoming a paid Writer/Author.   From then to now I've only written for myself.   Evidently, that’s changing.