I was pretty happy with how my career had gone, mainly because of the enormous freedom I've had to write what I've wanted to write. I had a very clear picture of who I was as a writer.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I certainly feel my career was a great career because it inspired so many many people, literally hundreds of people to follow a new kind of life and to realize that they could make out and advance their own professional and private and social lives.
I became a full-time writer in 1993 and have been very happy, insofar as anybody is, since.
I felt like I was never going to be a great writer. I felt like I was going to be a good writer at best. I wanted to be great at something.
I would always get a lot of work as a writer, but that wasn't what I wanted to be. For me, I was only doing half of what I really wanted to do - write and direct.
To me, the pinnacle of my career is writing for youth. I can die happy: I have succeeded in doing what I have always wanted to do.
Writing was something I always liked, but it wasn't a career until I was laid off from my executive position in my 30s. I started a website because I was bored, unemployed and angry.
I've carved out a career for myself really as a writer.
I think I became a writer because I used to write letters to my friends, and I used to love writing them. I loved the idea that you can put marks on a page and send it off, and two days later, someone laughs somewhere else in the world.
Although my other ambition was to be a musical theater star (and I would attend college on a voice scholarship), writing was never far from my mind.
I wanted to be involved with literature. I certainly wasn't going to be able to write for a living, and I didn't have enough confidence in my talent to think that I should be just doing that. Publishing seemed like fun to me - to be involved with writers. And it did turn out to be.