MY STORY

When I wasn't tearing around the neighborhood crashing into things (trees can be tricky) or acting like each baseball game (or any game, for that matter) was a "winner take all" epic, I was reading. Plenty of short stories, particularly those in "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine" and "Boy's Life." Also comic books, tons and tons of comic books, along with science fiction by the truckloads. And anything else I could find, from "Newsweek" and "Reader's Digest" to "Highlights" and the encyclopedia.Like most avid readers, I wanted to read more than the story in front of me: I wanted to read MY story, the way I would write it. Started in the 7th grade and received praise, which was nice, but I knew I needed to do better.Kept writing, pages and pages that were stored in boxes, page that were taken out every few months and after re-reading to see if I'd made progress, stored again, out of sight. Started submitting and got rejected, but sold three stories on my first day of acceptance into professionalism and that kept me on track.Now I write daily, though most of it is not fiction. Still, it is writing, and when I get the chance--or more precisely, when I make the chance--to write fiction, I revert to the boy on the couch, lost in a story. I think that most writers truly love that feeling, of being "in" the story, lost but intrigued by what comes next.