I scrawled in five-year-old writing on the cover (The Three Little Pigs) and on the last page (THE END). For the other pages, my mother was my scribe. She wrote my words on ruler-straight lines underneath my crayon illustrations. Then, I took a stapler and bound my first book together. My first experiment with the written word — my written word — was thus published for all to see. Although I simply retold a story, for the first time I had expressed my own creativity through the written word.

Then, in first grade, my teacher gave me lined pages. I wrote my stories carefully on the lines. These stories were no longer simple retellings, but my own creations. The class published them at the elementary school publishing center: plastic comb bindings.

At home in the afternoons, my classmate, neighbor, and friend became my co-writer and illustrator. We sat, side-by-side, at a plastic blue Smurf table. Together, we wrote and illustrated stories set in all times and settings—from orphans in our day to dinosaurs that traveled through space and time. I wrote words. She drew pictures. She wrote words. I drew pictures. We stapled the pages together.

As I moved through school, our Smurf table publishing world came to an end, and the elementary school publishing center was no longer a monthly destination. But my interest in the written word remained at my core. Anytime anything even remotely interesting happened in my family, I produced another issue of the Family Tribune and delivered it to every member of my family and to my grandparents who were far way. I wrote a play and my friends and I acted in it. I wrote stories and half of a novel. Then, come high school and college, I wrote term paper after term paper.

Now I write for myself, I write for my family, and I share my words online. I suppose writing on a webpage is much like stapling my books: it’s not professional, and few will read my words. But the words are mine. As I improve my ability to write, I will better find my voice for expressing my own experiences — whether those experiences focus on travel adventures, nonfiction research, or the creative explorations of my imagination.

Someday, my words will be bound between covers.

Amateur that I am, I know that I am a writer: I have always been a writer.