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But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - partly because of the salary cut if I went to my other love, teaching; and partly because I still have stories to tell, even though it isn't all that fun doing the work anymore.

I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.

I looked back at the years since I'd left college and thought of the list of things I'd have liked to do. I'd always wanted to write a book - not a small undertaking. I never felt I had the time or creative energy to spare in order to write one as well as I wanted.

I wanted to be a teacher, but I was a lousy student, one of the slowest readers. It was a tremendous struggle. But I'm lucky I had some teachers who saw something in me.

It took me a couple of years after I got out of Berkeley before I dared to start writing. That academic mind-set - which was kind of shallow in my case anyway - had begun to fade.

I had left teaching, which I enjoyed, because I realized I couldn't get tenure at a research university.

In retrospect, it seems like everything in my life led to me becoming a writer. I just didn't realise it at the time.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that I liked telling stories, and I decided that I would try writing. Ten years later, I finally got a book published. It was hard. I had no skills. I knew nothing about the business of getting published. So I had to keep working at it.

Naturally, it was easier for me to envision becoming a novelist than it is for most people. I had two great in-house teachers; I had parents who considered a career in the arts a real possibility rather than a dreamy arrow shot into the sky.

I wish my school days could have dragged on a little longer, or that I could go back and do it later in life.