Where I Come From

"No I cannot forget from where it is that I come from/ I cannot forget the people who love me." - "Small Town" by John Mellencamp

While I was helping the six-year-old I teach work on a writing assignment about the Amazon Rain Forest this morning, she asked me when I knew I wanted to be a writer. It then occured to me that I don't think I've shared any information on my writing background with you guys, so I thought I'd correct that today.

I decided that I wanted to become a teacher and a writer in second grade. I had the world's best teacher, Mrs. Dye, at Covina Elementary School in Covina, CA, and she inspired me to write. She not only told me that I was a good writer, but that I was a gifted storyteller, which I knew even then were two totally different things. That's when I became a writer, even if it was just in my own head at that point.

In elementary school I won schoolwide awards for a biography on my mom and for an anti-drugs paper I wrote in third grade. This was in 1990-91, and Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign was still going strong. I got to stand up in front of the whole school at an assembly and read my paper which I still remember doing. The most memorable part was when I knocked over the microphone, producing that screeching feedback sound that rang in my ears for an hour. Oh well. It was still cool to be up there and be recognized for my writing.

I was also published in a couple of children's magazines in the early 90s, but then I stopped writing for fun, for the pure enjoyment of seeing my words scrolled across a page, until I quit my teaching job in 2006. I was working like crazy with no time to breathe, let alone write, and I had an epiphany that that wasn't what I was supposed to be doing anymore. Yes, I loved teaching, but I had to find another way to do it. Enter the family I currently work for. Their daughter was in my class when I decided to leave, and they found out they had another one on the way at the same time. One thing led to another, and here I am five years later. I am still teaching, but now I have the time to pursue my dream of being a writer, which in a way, I always have been. Sure, I didn't write for a long time, but I always had ideas and dreams that I am now doing something about. Now to get published...