It may have started in
1984, at the age of 11. It probably started a few years later, fall
of 1986. I was 14. I had written a short story. I was growing up and
I was more and more withdrawn everyday. It may have been during that
Thanksgiving break when I met Freesia. We talked about all the
fantastic things we were going to do with life. Being a writer was
her goal, and perhaps to impress her or because I was still riding a
high with the first and only story I had ever written, I too said I
wanted to be a writer. As far as Freesia goes, we're still writing
letters, like we've been doing since 1986. We're both still claiming
to be writers, or proposing to be writers or perhaps we're throwing
towels because we were writers.
It may have started at
any point on my timeline from the onset of my war in the Middle East
in 1990 or the time I later started college in 1993. It may have
started in March of 1995, after the house fire left me homeless and
Bleeding Sheep published my
first short story “Fish of a Nazi Haven.” Then again, it may have
started a year later when I decided to leave Botany behind me and
become a writer. Yes, it was January 1996, ten years after I first
made the statement that I wanted to be a writer, when I decided to go
out and do it.
