I decided in the fifth grade that I was going to be a writer.  I wrote a poem and gave it to my teacher and she cried.  Then I showed it to another teacher.  She, too, cried.  That was when I discovered the power of the written word.  I had control over people’s emotions by putting mine down on paper.

It was easy to write when I was young and naïve and filled with such powerful feelings and brave ideas.  It was easy to tell people that I was a writer.  I had drawers full of journals and notebooks filled with poetry and pockets full of scrap pieces of paper with some brilliant piece of fleeting genius that I had while in line at lunch or on the bus to school.

Writing was a release.  It freed my soul.  It was perfect and it was easy and it was good…