When I was about 15 years old I overheard one of my cousins saying she wanted to become a journalist. I borrowed her idea and never gave it back.
She is still studying to become a doctor. I write for a living.
Mind you, I had imagined myself as a writer from I was knee high, and would write dubious poems in a burgundy courderoy book someone had given me to use as a diary and which I kept among my treasures in an old dulcimena grip under the house. I had my doubts about the poems and would keep the book buried under the tons of this and that that I used to play dolly house with.
I only truly believed I could become a writer when my mother, God rest her soul, found the book one day, read the poems and acted so proud, I had no other choice but to take the whole thing seriously.
I can still recall her beaming face the day I put three dirty Jamaican one dollar bills in an envelope with a form I had torn from an old magazine and marched all the way to the post office in Catadupa to post the letter ordering a book on how to become a writer.
The book never came.
She is still studying to become a doctor. I write for a living.
Mind you, I had imagined myself as a writer from I was knee high, and would write dubious poems in a burgundy courderoy book someone had given me to use as a diary and which I kept among my treasures in an old dulcimena grip under the house. I had my doubts about the poems and would keep the book buried under the tons of this and that that I used to play dolly house with.
I only truly believed I could become a writer when my mother, God rest her soul, found the book one day, read the poems and acted so proud, I had no other choice but to take the whole thing seriously.
I can still recall her beaming face the day I put three dirty Jamaican one dollar bills in an envelope with a form I had torn from an old magazine and marched all the way to the post office in Catadupa to post the letter ordering a book on how to become a writer.
The book never came.
