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Stephanie, age 3 |
This is me, at 3, looking angelic.
While I may have been angelic in my heart, I didn’t always act that way. After all, I had curly red hair and was the middle of five children.
We lived in an old house on a river in Connecticut. (We later learned that the previous owners had seen a ghost. The poor thing didn’t dare show itself with the five of us living there.) We made rafts and swam and fished; climbed trees, rode bikes, built forts; got into trouble, put on plays … we were never still for long.
I realize now that I became a children’s book author because of my childhood. As the middle of five, I learned a lot about human relationships and motivations and emotions and conflict—the stuff of plots. |
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| Me, Shep, Flip, and Matthew (he's the one in the silly cap). Lucia must have been taking a nap. |
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The other reason was that I grew up as a reader. We weren’t allowed to watch TV during the week and there were no computers or video games. Reading was what I did when I wasn’t outside.
Of course, now I know that the best way to become a writer is to be a reader. The more you read, the more you learn how to build sentences and create characters and what a good plot is. And because you’re having fun reading, it’s a painless kind of learning.
I love what I do. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.
Oh, and I have a lovely husband and wonderful son and zappy little dog named Zsa-Zsa. We move around a lot, but we like it that way. As a wise man once said, “I go where I have to to learn what I need to.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. |
