My Writing Journey and Throwing Out All the Rules and Advice

As with all great and epic tales, my writing journey began in the second grade. I assume all heroes are forged on the playground at 8 years old. Please don’t try to change my mind on this.

I mentioned this in this post about books that made me writer, but Ramona Quimby, Age 8 was a really important book to me as a kid, and one that made me want to tell stories. As a first grader, I wrote books all the time, which is to say that I stapled a piece of construction paper around some copy paper, and filled those pages with stories and illustrations. But by second grade, I was ready to really become a writer.

I’m not entirely sure why the adults in my life let the journey of writing begin, but I do suppose it had something to do with there not being many other affordable activities for kids to do. We didn’t have cable, and my free time was mostly spent throwing a tennis ball against a wall or watching reruns of prime time sit coms on UHF channels. So, I guess writing was an acceptable activity.

Between filling notebooks and going to the library, my literary life was pretty full.

And while I spend a lot of time thinking about writing as a kid, my writing journey has seen some shit, gang. Long gone are the days of filling notebooks with teen angst while I lay huddled in a…