Why do I write?
My parents are both readers, and I was an only child until I was 4, so that might be why I started reading early and never looked back. I wrote my first full-length story at the age of 7; I remember spreading out my pages on the picnic table while we were camping at Backbone State Park in Iowa. The story, called "Miricle [sic; remember, I was 7] at Porter's Airport," involved various rescue scenes, illustrations of various islands that the adventurous pilot in the story visited in his quest for home, and an eventual happy ending.
My first motivation to write, I think, came from a love of words and, sometimes, loneliness.
In school in small-town Iowa, I was set apart as a nerdy child who read well and voraciously, speeding through the reading books at a pace that got me the dubious position of being ahead academically, but not socially. I had glasses at 8. I had friends, too, but mostly in the neighborhood rather than at school, so thankfully the library wasn't my only friend. (I have great siblings, too, in case they're reading).
I wrote a newsletter for my parents (including fiction) that they dutifully pretended to be surprised about when it showed up in their mailbox. At school, I wrote stories; at home, I hand-copied library books I liked, wrote stories, created games, and generally continued to indulge my love for words.
It was a no-brainer to major in English and speech/drama (one of my other artistic outlets is theatre) in college. I ended up teaching English and creative writing at a high school in NYC at the age of 23. I scribbled a lot of poems during that time, often during study halls when my 100+ teenagers a day were driving me crazy.
After five years, I took the plunge and went back to school for another degree, again in English with a writing emphasis. I tell people that the student loans I got from that are like having a new car without the car, but I never have regretted this decision and the time to soak myself in literature and writing for almost two years.
Thankfully, the student loans are very close to paid off, too:)
I followed that up with writing, doing graphic design, and managing publications for the National American Indian Housing Council, teaching composition at Northern Virginia Community College, and teaching writing at Bowie State University.
If you read this far, I thank you for allowing me the self-indulgence to write what I just wrote above. What matters now is this: how much am I writing now? What motivates me now?
All along, during all of my "other" work, I've written stories and poems and general essay-type pieces. In addition to that, I tried "ghost writing" a Sweet Valley High piece when I was in my 20's and got a very nice letter in reply that said that my characters thought and said too much and didn't do enough. Good advice that I will remember.
I wrote a very strange and unpublishable half-novel involving things like cotton balls and orange men as part of NaNoWriMo (Nat'l Novel Writing Month) last year, and now I'm at work on another one for middle grades to young adults.
What motivates me? I see any art as an act of giving, and I think I'm finally through much of my self-indulgent writing (though this post might give lie to that) and ready to give more in my writing. I want to write for the child who is like I was---a reader, perhaps slightly set apart, imaginative, and maybe a little lonely and sad sometimes. It might sound silly to say, but I think that I want to write for children to help them know that they are not alone. I think that as a child, if I had known that
others felt the same way, my childhood could have been a lot easier.
I'd like also to give my readers work of the highest quality I can, work that acknowledges their imagination and intelligence and worth. Madeleine L'Engle, the famous children's writer who died this fall, is probably my biggest inspiration and her kind of work my aspiration (though I know it doesn't do anyone any good to try to copy--I don't mean that). It's interesting how publishers--many of them--first thought "A Wrinkle in Time" was too sophisticated for children--and how it later became an enduring classic and award-winner.
I want to write a good story, or many of them, to be exact.
That's what motivates me.
