I wonder why people are so obsessed about whether Shakespeare wrote his plays. I think it’s a class thing because there are no records of Shakespeare having ever attended school. What about my love of writing? I haven’t been obsessed with writing all my life. Many writers talk about writing stories when they were kids. I wrote stories only for school assignments and for my journal. I was assigned journal writing from grade school through high school and writing stories in my journal was a way to keep the journal filled when I didn’t want to write about my life or when I got behind in my journal writing. I would write a story and then break it up for a week’s worth of journal entries. I don’t think any of my teachers ever cared what I wrote about, they just wanted to make sure I was writing. And making up stories was so much more easier than writing about my actual life. I even got into poetry writing as another way to keep the journal filled.

I wished I had kept those journals. It would have been interesting to read what I thought or what stories I wrote during grade school, junior high and high school. Unfortunately, I destroyed them all when I left for college because I didn’t want to take them with me and I certainly didn’t want my mother or anyone else in my family discovering and reading them. I had such a lack of vision back then.

Looking back, I have to thank my schoolteachers. They got me into writing at a very young age and years later, I’m still writing and I still keep a journal written and online. Life is funny like that sometimes.