From a Failure at 12…
By the time I was 12 I knew I wanted to be a writer — a writer of some sort. I hadn’t dug down far enough in my brain to come up with anything more specific. I’d read du Maurier’s Rebecca. At the point in the story when the reader learns about who Rebecca really was, I found I had to reread it several times. Had the author really done that? Had she led the reader down the primrose path just to drop them off a Cornwall cliff? Yes, yes she had. I loved it! I was hooked.
My mother read the women’s magazines, Family Circle and Woman’s Day; they were cheap. Since they were always around I would read them, too. I would read how to lose weight (not successful), how to bake the best meals for a husband (I was 12), and how to look lovely when he came home from work (yeah, right).
But, unlike today, those magazines had short stories. I read several of the stories and they must not have impressed me because I can’t remember anything about them. Nothing, except for the idea that I could write one.
I knew I could write one.
The previous Christmas my parents have given me a portal Royal typewriter, probably thinking it would encourage me toward a secretarial career. Wrong on several levels.
I took the typewriter down to our basement where there were stored cans and Mason jars of food (well, it was 1959 and the Cold…
