itsoktosay

Growing up in my house, there was no such thing as having your “own” space. I come from a huge family and have lots of siblings (5 brothers and 3 sisters to be exact). Although we didn’t all live under the same roof (papa was a rolling stone), our apartment on Chicago’s north side (5412 N. Winthrop, I still remember the address) was quite…lively, to say the least. And so to escape I’d lose myself in doodling and writing. I remember drawing faces with dialogue underneath. It became clear that I liked writing dialogue more than I liked drawing (I most certainly wasn’t the greatest drawer in the world). Shortly after I started creating stories in script form. I liked the idea of inventing characters, settings, ideas, scenarios, and pretty soon I was filling up spiral notebooks and loose leaf pages with dialogue and action. From looking at the pages one might assume that I wanted to become a playwright or screenwriter. Hell, at the time I had no idea what I wanted to be. I simply enjoyed writing and telling stories.

I remember in eight grade the class was assigned to write a poem for homework and while the rest of the class sighed in disappointment, I smiled inside ready to bolt home and get started. That night I wrote two poems, (I can’t remember the name of either one) one for me and the other was for my twin brother who I shared a class with. He was one of the many who didn’t want to write it in the first place. The following day the teacher read our poems aloud. The class liked his better.

I continued writing throughout high school and eventually decided to take up Poetry as a major in college. Eventually it dawned on me, what in the hell was I going to do with a degree in Poetry? Uuummm, yeah…not much. I switched to Fiction Writing and I was back to creating characters and writing dialogue. This was a much better fit. I was a much happier me. Fiction classes were a breeze, stories were fun to read and write, (except when it came to editing and rewriting) and I left Columbia with a bachelor’s degree in Fiction Writing and Sallie Mae on my ass.