A portrait of the artist as a young snot.

My math teacher Mr. Norman once told me: "I'm not the only teacher who doesn't like you! You should hear what they say about you in the teacher's lounge!" To which I said something snotty about the teachers living sad, meaningless lives if they were spending time talking about some kid. Despite my reputation for being a teacher's pet (I think it was the tortoise shell glasses), I was really not popular among the staff.

A few teachers did encourage me, though. One in particular was Mrs. Gwinn, my sixth and eighth grade English teacher. She said I could become a professional writer and that it would be--in her words--very easy. "You should read the garbage they put on bookshelves," she said to me in the hall one day. "You could get published like that!" She snapped her fingers and nodded knowingly. I accepted her word as gospel.

If I could go back in time, I would pop up into that hallway at that precise moment and tell my younger self that while, yes, there is garbage on those shelves, most of those writers still had to slave and sweat over their work. Most of them toil away in anonymity forever, or their one published book is relegated to the bargain bin before disappearing entirely. It's not "easy," and you have to be prepared to either work your butt off, or accept the possibility you might never be as rich and famous as Stephen King. Or both. You have to love it despite whatever material rewards you do or don't get.

Not that it would have made any difference. My younger self would have told me to shut up because she knows everything and doesn't need to learn anything, so there. And then I would have given my younger self the winning lottery numbers for ten years hence, so I could just buy my own publishing house.

The morbid child

When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about the end of the world.

Now, by "fantasize" I don't necessarily mean I giddily planned for the eventuality of the Apocalypse the way I giddily planned for my future as a rock star/movie star. My thoughts were more along the lines of... contingency planning. What would I do if zombies took over my hometown, or aliens invaded the planet, or I got forgotten at the mall overnight? (Ok, that last one might have involved some giddiness.) If I got lost in the desert, or dumped in the woods like Hansel and/or Gretel, which creatures would I avoid and which would I eat? Would I have the mental fortitude to bean a cute little rabbit if I had to?

I was not raised by survivalists. Maybe I was innately morbid. Maybe I had watched too many late-night horror movies. Maybe I was just born a control-freak who has to plan for every possible scenario. (To this day, I carry a Swiss Army knife with me, although I'd be hard pressed to cut down even the scrawniest tree with the wee saw at my disposal. Mostly I use it for cutting the tags off of just-bought shoes that I want to wear immediately.) Or maybe my youthful mind was writing stories before I was calling it that. Morbid stories, but stories nonetheless.

The first "story" I can remember coming up with involved a little girl who'd been forgotten by her parents, who then had to fend for herself in the wild. I remember that the story made me cry as I recited it in the hallway of our apartment, to an audience of none. I know I was was about three years old because it was before my brother was born. It's a good thing no one else heard me, I guess. It's probably pretty disturbing to hear babies talking about scavenging in the ominous dark. Other stories involved people being eaten by giant squid and sharks. Maybe I was just morbid.

In other, more light-hearted news, I'm working on a fun little side gig. I'll be able to post about that soon, I think, barring any Apocalypse or zombie attack.