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At the age of seventeen, I left school. I went to university, and I wrote my first attempts at poetry in a room in a flat at the edge of the city.

From age 7 on, I wanted to be a writer.

I came to write after several mini careers. I did live theatre, managed a cosmetics store and was a local television personality.

I was writing from the time I was 12 years old, but I originally wanted to be a novelist.

I always wrote; my first story was published in the magazine The American Girl when I was 11.

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.

The first time I can remember thinking that I would like to be a writer came in sixth grade, when our teacher Mrs. Crandall gave us an extended period of time to write a long story. I loved doing it. I started working seriously at becoming a writer when I was seventeen.

I suppose I started writing seriously at 16 years old. I thought I wrote a novel at 16 and sent it to New York! They sent it back because it wasn't novel.

In the '60s, I was teaching humanities at a college in upstate New York and trying to publish a novel I'd written in graduate school. But nothing was happening. So I moved to New York City and got a job as a messenger at a place that made movies.

I grew up in a little town with about 6,000 or 7,000 people. I always knew from 11 or 12 years old that I wanted to be a writer, and I always wanted to write about growing up in a place like that that's small and you don't fit into.