I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was in any way artistic or a potential mentor to a budding writer, and yet this is what I became.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think I became a writer because I didn't know of anything else to do. Maybe some incident from my childhood influenced me.
I didn't want to be a writer. First I wanted to act, and then I wanted to be a painter like my big sister.
I wasn't always a writer. When I went to college and majored in fine arts, I was a painter. Then I was a stay-at-home mom.
I came to write after several mini careers. I did live theatre, managed a cosmetics store and was a local television personality.
My early life had a lot to do with my origins as a writer, but I didn't get into doing any writing at all until I was about 35 years old.
I began my writing career in a very isolated place and time.
In retrospect, it seems like everything in my life led to me becoming a writer. I just didn't realise it at the time.
What I find curious is that I ever became a writer at all. I grew up in the South Bronx, the land of poverty and petty hoodlums.
I came from two harsh dictatorships, Nazi and Stalinist. I never thought of becoming a writer as such, yet in a lucid moment, I recognised what I had to do.
My father was a writer; I've known a lot of children of writers - daughters and sons of writers, and it can be a hard way to grow up.