First memory. I sit on the floor of my bedroom, legs folded beneath me, drawing paper scattered across the braided rug. In my hand, a blue crayon. My mother is fixing her hair in the bathroom across the room from me. I draw her picture in blue, and I write words—my version of words—to tell her story. My mother, a blue crayon, paper, and words.
I love them all.
Growing up, it never for a moment occurred to me that I could be a writer for a living. Never once. I thought it was for other folks—a special, sanctified few who possessed magical abilities ordained by angels. And yet, I was a writer. I wrote all the time. Indeed, I couldn’t not write. It’s in my DNA. I recall a famous writer—I want to say Stephen King—saying that if he were strapped in a straight jacket and unable to write, he would write with his tongue on the roof of his mouth. I get it. I get it. Not to write is not to breathe—such is my kinship with words.
Yet, despite never thinking that writing could be my life’s work—something to be done for pay!—opportunity knocked at the precise moment the rest of my world fell apart. And though fear gripped me—and every writer’s belief that she will fail utterly—I did it anyway. I did it! I wrote a book, and another, and another. And the word “author” was placed on my head, wrapped in a wreath of daisies and wild grasses. Thorns, too, if truth be told.
To date, I’ve written and had published hundreds of books and poems and plays. I’ve edited countless others. I’ve written under my name and multiple pseudonyms. I write daily. I write for fun and for pay—often for both. And I am swathed in gratitude for this life of mine—this life of paper and words. I write with computer keys and purple ink and stubby pencils and fingertips on touch screens. I write on paper and computers and on chalkboards in my mind. I write awake and asleep, in life and in dreams, by day and by night, conscious and unawares.
I am a writer. A writer!
I live a life I love—and whether magical or not, I know with a certainty it has been touched by angels. As I write, I swear I can hear them sing.
They sound like blue crayon sweeping across paper on a braided rug.