When I was growing up I created an imaginary village for my sister and I to play in. Some kids have imaginary friends; I had an entire village of them.

I doodled with my finger on my leg. I noticed I did this all the time. I wasn’t doodling squiggly lines and ovals, I was writing words, words that seemed to be begging to come out of me.

A former college friend told me her husband loved to read the letters I wrote to her. He said they were well written and always kept his attention. She said he never asked to read letters she received from other friends.

One day it just came to me; you are a writer.

Angry about the way I’d been treated by my husband’s boss; his eyes making me feel violated, after he’d been drinking, I wrote my first “Letter to the Editor” about drinking. The newspaper printed it and even highlighted it by placing an illustration beside it. I was hooked; letters and commentaries followed, which were printed in newspapers regularly. At the time I was also doing a lot of fictional writing and sending off my work with the hope of getting published.

“Why don’t you go back to college, dear?” My husband encouraged me to return to school to earn a degree. I did; and graduated with honors and a degree in writing arts and criminal justice.

While taking care of our youngest child who was almost five at the time, I saw an ad for Hometown reporters….Hmmmm, a chance to write, I thought. I went for it; and spent three years writing feature articles, several series of articles and a weekly humor column for this newspaper. I was the assistant to the editor, as well.

Then, a longing inside me called me back home and I quit my job. I went back to working on the fictional books I’d written and tried to market, but at that point had not had any success in getting a publisher interested in them.

I reentered my book Puddles and added new plotlines to what I’d already written and played with; and kept editing it and sending it out and editing it and sending it out and it was accepted by PublishAmerica, Inc.in 2001, and I am a published author of fiction today.

Why do I write? I write because there is something inside me that won’t allow me to not write.