I always wanted to be a writer, but in my sophomore year of high school in northeastern Ohio I didn't think it would be possible. Sister Mary Donald, my English teacher, encouraged me to write an essay for bonus points (which I needed) and so I wrote The Art of Sitting on a Cold Toilet Seat. Several nights later my mother came home from the PTA meeting and shook me out of bed. "What did you write? Sister said it was trash!" Uh oh. . . . I stopped writing, but only for a wh more...