Why did I start writing? 

Every time I asked my dad a question, he had an answer, and if he didn’t have an answer, he made one up.  Later I learned that the voices in the radio did not come from talented fleas.  I was a little disappointed, but my father’s invented answers showed me how whimsical, how powerful, the imagination could be.

I learned about poems when my mom took me to workshops at the Greenwood Library in Corpus Christi.  I wrote my first poem on a Big Chief writing pad, and my next poem, “The Wind,” won third place in a local contest.  I made up stories, too.  I shared a room with my younger sister, and at night, I whispered stories to help her sleep.  She still remembers them.

The nursery rhymes in Mother Goose made me fall in love with reading, and The Diary of Anne Frank made me fall in love with writing.  I started my own diary in 1980, gave it up, and then started again in 1985.  I’ve been writing in a journal ever since.

What are my other interests?