I think of myself as having come to the writing profession rather late. But grownups who asked me at eight years old what I wanted to be when I grew up received this answer without hesitation, “A writer. I have so many stories in my head that I want to share.” In fact, when I was eight, I was not an aspiring writer. I was a writer. I wrote stories all the time. It’s only as a grownup, after many detours and turns in life’s crooked road, that sharing the stories in my head has become intimidating.
In the movie Shadowlands, when C.S. Lewis meets his future wife, he asks to hear one of her poems. She responds, “I’ll give you an old one; that will be safest.” So, in that vein, here is a recently unearthed story I wrote when I was eight.
