As a young girl, I found "happily ever afters" boring, an unfit ending for the elaborate stories I imagined. Were those hours of daydreaming in my tree house in Northern California the start of my writers journey to understanding plot? Possibly, though it took years and an act of magic before I ever actually wrote one of my stories down on paper.
Language came late for me. And what could be better for a child born without language than a mother gifted in art? Nonverbal well beyond all developmental terms, I relied on my mother's favorite past time of doodling. She doodled while talking on t more...