I was still pretty green as a human being during the spring semester of 1998. Hadn’t been exposed to a lot of what the world had to offer, and my horizons didn’t stretch very far. By that point, I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I wasn’t sure what kind or how to …
Category: Why I Write
An intermittent exploration of the people, places, and things that compel me to tell stories.
Why I Write: Enter the Mystery Sleuth
I didn’t go to kindergarten. The year I should have gone – 1979 – was the last year kindergarten wasn’t a legal requirement in Vermont, and circumstances being what they were, it made more sense for my parents to keep me home until first grade. When the time came, I started school with a plethora …
Why I Write: A Book of Letters
If I’ve read Dear Mr. Henshaw once – and I established in this month’s installment of With Apologies to Hornby that I recently did – I’ve read it at least 50 times. From fourth through most of eighth grade, that book was my go-to. I’d read it, close it, flip to the beginning and start …
Why I Write: Writing from the Hartt
“I feel like a farmer watching his corn grow. This is great!” It was another Wednesday morning at The Stowe Reporter, the weekly newspaper in Stowe, VT, that gave me my first full-time job as a reporter. We were up against our deadline, and I was in my office, pounding out the last article I …
WHY I WRITE: Unpacking the Past
I was up in the attic yesterday, finally putting away Christmas decorations and doing a bit of reorganizing. In addition to those tasks, I hoped to find three items that were packed away … somewhere. Somehow, I found all three things together in the second or third storage bin I opened. They were stacked neatly …
