How and Why Did I Become a Writer?

Not long after I learned to read (I cut my teeth on The Wizard of Oz), I developed a strong urge to tell stories of my own. That is: I wanted to write!

I decided to write my first story when I was five or six years old. I borrowed a pencil and a piece of paper from my mother and asked her what I should write my story about.

“Write about what you know about,” she advised me.

So I did. The story came out something like this: “Johnny and his mother went to the circus. They saw clowns. They had fun. They came home. The end.”

My mother was proud of me. (Of course. That’s what mothers are for.) But when I showed my story to my brother, Neil, who was nine years older than I, he said, “It’s not a real story. A real story needs conflict.”

That put me in a quandary. At the age of six, I had no conflict in my life, so I couldn’t write a real story if I were to write about what I knew about. That put my writing career off for another ten years or so.

Then I started reading the novels of Richard Bissell, and I thought to myself: I can do this. I tried it, and I found I was right: I could do this. By that time I was a teenager, so of course there was conflict in the life I knew so well; it goes with the territory.

I haven’t turned back since. I haven’t supported myself with my writing (not many writers do), but I’ve never stopped writing, and in the meantime I’ve worked in the written word: as a student, a reader, a bookseller, an editor, a ghostwriter, a fiction writer, a publisher, and a teacher of creative writing.

I owe it to my mother, my brother, and mainly to other writers. And of course to my readers.

Now that you know how and why I became a writer, I invite you to look at my home page and see what I've done with that joyful pursuit: www.johnmdaniel.com

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Note:

Today, a number of professional writers with blogs have gotten together to write the same post “Why I Became a Writer.” Please stop by any or all of their blogs/websites to comment and find out what drives us in our favorite obsession.

John Brantingham and Sunny Frazier             http://johnbrantingham.blogspot.com/

Marta Chausee                        http://martachausee.blogspot.com/

John Daniel  http://johnmdaniel.blogspot.com/.

Cora Ramos http://coraramos-cora.blogspot.com/

Melodie Campbell        funnygirlmelodie.blogspot.com

Lesley Diehl      http://anotherdraught.blogspot.com 

Jim Callan       www.jamesrcallan.com/blog

Chris Swinney http://clswinney.com

John Lewis      http://www.Lions-post.blogspot.com
Stephen Brayton  www.stephenbrayton.wordpress.com
Carole Avila  http://caroleavilablog.wordpress.com/
Augie Hicks   http://augiecorner.blogspot.com
Eileen Obser  www.eileenobser.com