I've been a writer for as long as I can remember.  In kindergarten I was the Chief Editor in my fingerpainting class.   As I moved through elementary school, I honed my writing skills to a fine polish by learning to form a variety of letters.  I painstakingly reproduced each letter dozens of times on large pulpy sheets of lined paper, using thick lead pencils.  Big, fat, friendly letters.  I later learned the sound each letter was designated to produce, and began to assemble the letters together to create words.  By the 3rd grade, I was already producing phrases, then entire sentences.  In later grades came punctuation.  Paragraphs.  The inklings of a vocabulary.  Then a page.  More pages.   Soon the stories came.  The vocabulary grew.  More stories.  Even more stories.  Poetry.  Songs.  More stories.  The words were flowing out of me now like a spigot.  The material was unstoppable.  People were amazed.  Girls giggled.  The stories were a sensation.  Reams of material.  I put my heart, my mind, my guts. . . . everything went into the stories.  I worked as a Stringer for a newspaper.  And then assistant editor.  Feature stories.  Novellettes.   And then of course . .  the novels were begun.   The draining, heinous, bone-wrenching, impossible novels.  I put my soul into them.  Years of work.  Years.  And no one cared.  No one cared.  And then, of course, the drinking came.  The ennui.  The loneliness of solitary work.  Red wine and Marlboros became my muse.   Soon I needed a bigger kick godammit.  The whiskey.  The fucking whiskey.   Soon, even that wasn't enough.  So I hacked.  What the hell. . . I needed the money.  I did what the bastards wanted.  They wanted crap?  I gave them the crap. . the mounds of crap.  My brain lubricated with the soothing liquor.  And still I wrote, obsessed, my mind thumping in hangover, dirty coffee cups piling up in the sink.  Not eating.  Not leaving the cabin.  I wrote.  I wrote.  I wrote.  When one day I heard a voice.  "Go back," it said gently.  "Go back."  And at last I understood.   Best to start over.  Best to start over.  I'd go back.  Start over.  Sitting here now at the dining room table.  Writing.  Writing.  Writing.  Writing big, lumpy friendly letters on the pulpy lined paper.  With a big fat lead pencil.