Looking into history back...

"I'm looking behind us now, across the count of time, down the long haul into history back.  I sees the end, what were the start..." (Savannah Nix in "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome")

The very start, the little Debi (then spelled "Debbie" by my mom, as I changed it in late high school/early college).  Mom tells anyone who'll care to listen that I'm her "different child", the one who didn't behave like a normal child.  The one who was always making up stories to tell......

Before I learned to read and write, she would check on my three siblings, happily watching cartoons or Captain Kangaroo in the living room, and then come out to check on her "other" little girl, the one who had tipped all the chairs over in the kitchen and put them together to form an enclosure.  I would be crawling on my knees, "pacing" my enclosure, growling when she came into view.  Later, I would tell her that I was pretending I was a tiger - or a lion - or some other wild animal.  I was never able to tell her back in those days where I had seen a wild animal in a cage, as there were no zoos in our area, and I really can't tell you now where I ever saw such a thing.  (We're talking early 60's in a small Maine town.  Black and white television.  Three channels that came in on an antenna - unless the weather was bad.)

Then my older sister, playing "teacher" when she came home from school, taught me to read and write before I was old enough to start school....

So began my devouring of books, and my subconscious adherence to one of the golden rules of creative writing: If you want to be a good writer, you must READ and absorb the nuances of the author's voice.

So also began the writing, for whole storylines danced in my head after finishing a good book, and I just HAD to write the stories down.  Characters whispered in my ear and showed me their lives in my mind's eye, and I wrote their stories down.......

It took me a long time before I realized that not everyone had characters living in their heads and not everyone was driven to write.  I really was Mom's "different child".