New Beginnings

I can hardly believe I finally have a blog. It took me long enough!

I was always the last kid on the block to nag my parents into the latest gizmo. I just didn’t care that much for things. Oh, sure, I loved my baseball bat and my roller skates. And the dolls were okay, although I was never into Barbie. And I couldn’t have survived without my bicycle, which still lingers in my garage, waiting for the day – which will never come – when I shall climb back on and resume my search for adventure.

But I was content, for the most part, to sit in the backyard and look for four-leaf clovers and fairy folk. I found hundreds of the former, but, alas, none of the latter. I’m still searching, though, for I know they are out there.

In between all the searching, I read. From an early age, I consumed anything I could get my hands on. My mother used to go junking with her good friend, Jo. They would load all of us kids – there were seven of us between the two families – into the old station wagon and we’d drive into the city, where the best junk stores were located. My mother would sometimes give me a dime or a quarter, and I’d follow my nose to the used book section. Literally. The musty smell was unmistakable, even to a seven year old.

I almost always found at least one treasure to tote back home. My favorites were the thick volumes of bedtime stories. I have a couple of those “365 Bedtime Stories” books, where one can read a very abbreviated tale every night for a year, if one is so inclined. I would take mine to the backyard and devour them in a matter of hours. Then I would press clovers into the crispy, yellowed pages.

All that reading led to a love of literature. I still read on a daily, and nightly, basis. I just can’t get enough. I often found myself reading the final page of a novel and asking myself, how does anyone do that? Where do they come up with the ideas, and how do they make it so interesting and lifelike that others not only enjoy what they read, but identify with the heroes and heroines. It boggled my mind for so long.

Then one day I finally decided to give it a try. I would write a novel for children. I never believed it was possible, and it remains unpublished, but at least I did get it written. After that first one, it became a bit easier, but remains no small task. But it’s fun and exciting, and I doubt if I will ever drop the pen now that I’ve felt the joy of watching the words spill out onto the paper.

So my blog shall be mainly about writing – especially writing for children. Hopefully it will be a productive tool that will stimulate growth and new ideas. At the least, it will be a therapeutic respite from laundry and dirty dishes.