Blogfest 2009

I love helping people declutter and organize their homes and their lives. It’s All Too Much just seemed to come naturally for all of those experiences – in some ways (and I know this sounds crazy!) it kind of wrote itself!

RiI’ve wanted to be a full-time writer since I was thirteen or fourteen (I wrote my first book-length manuscript at fifteen or so).  I had several excellent teachers and mentors in junior and high school, caring people who picked up on my passion and gave me great encouragement.  Writing gave me the same incredible, incomparable joy that reading did:  an entrance into another world, a world that was understandable to me and provided the magical escape that art so effortlessly does.

I started writing because I loved books and making up stories.  I used to love to tell tall tales as a kid and felt like I was doing a performance for an audience.  I’d push the limits and see how far I could go before an adult would bust me for lying.  My mother used to warn me about this with the cautionary tale, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” all the time.  It was her attempt to properly socialize my wild imagination.  In writing, I found a healthy outlet for my creativity.  But not before my nose grew to extreme lengths.   As a result, I will be using my Pinocchio shnoz at book signings.  Please don’t make fun of it.

I was writing before I knew it was called writing. I mean, I was making up both stories and free-form poetry before I could read. Unlike authors who were prodigies, I didn’t learn to read until I was taught it in first grade, but I certainly knew how to make up a story. Astro-Boy, a Japanese anime character, was often my companion in my early fiction, but every movie I saw or book that was read to me got at least a try to see if I would fit into its world. (Including the wonderful D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, which made a huge impression on me—after that my companions were fauns and dryads, centaurs, nymphs, and demi-gods.)

And I constantly, silently, made up stories in my head based on whatever I was doing. Like, what might happen if . . . the door to the abandoned house on our block was really the doorway to another planet. Or to a land where unfairly enslaved animals talked. Or to a kingdom where the true princess had been kidnapped by a wicked faun. I did this 24/7 and never told a soul about it until I was in high school.

But as a kid, I loved to play the princess sort of pretend with my girlfriends—and a lavish wardrobe of flower girl dresses supplied by my great-aunt who ran a bridal shop. And I loved playing—not doctor—but space explorer with my boyfriends. Although I didn’t start reading early, I did catch up very quickly to take a look at what I had missed. By fifth grade I was reading adult books; by sixth my mom was horrified to find me reading her copy of Valley of the Dolls. Now that doesn’t mean I was reading all grown-up books. I was unfailingly faithful to Nancy Drew and patterned my mystery stories on her adventures. And I read any book of any kind that had any sort of “urban magic” in it. I knew I was going to find real magic . . . right up until the moment when I realized that I was going to have to write about it instead.

As to my juvenilia, I am devastated to report that some of it has survived. Ye gods, does it suck!

The realization that it might, just might, be something at which I could excel.