When I turned thirteen and took a typing class, with typical early teen enthusiasm and total lack of critical ability, I started sending my stuff to publishers once I'd babysat long enough to earn the postage.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My first job, 9 years old, part-time, was selling Christmas cards door-to-door. Ten years old, my brother and I had paper routes. We delivered a morning paper called the 'L.A. Examiner.' Get up at 4 o'clock, fold your papers, deliver them and get ready for school.
I didn't even enter a bookshop until I was 14 because I couldn't afford books until I got my first Saturday job, but by the time I was six or seven, I spent practically every Saturday down my local library reading as much as I could and getting out as many books as I could.
When I was about 12, I spent the summer writing four plays on my dad's old typewriter for a school play competition. And I wrote little comic bits at secondary school and at university.
I started writing when I was about thirteen.
I started out when I was 29 - too young to write novels. I was broke. I was on unemployment insurance. I was supposed to be writing a Ph.D. dissertation, so I had a typewriter and a lot of paper.
Well, when I was 13, for my bar mitzvah I received my first typewriter. And that was special.
I was working probably at the age of 10, when I had my first paper route. I had every different kind of job you could possibly imagine as a young kid.
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.
I can always track my career by the children - I started writing right after the 14-year-old was born, and sold my first book just in time to pay for the birth of the 12-year-old.
When I was 16, I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines.