I wrote my first poem in third grade.  It was a haiku about friendship, inscribed in pencil on that soft yellow paper with bluegreen lines, the kind that tore if you erased more than once.  It totally surprised my third grade teacher, who didn’t like me very much, but she still had the decency to put it up on the bulletin board and tell me it was a good poem.

No, I don’t remember the last two lines, only that I had succeeded in impressing someone who seemed determined to be permanently unimpressed.

Now I write poems, I write prose, I write speeches and sermons and talks and workshops and keynotes, and I apparently write books.  Anyone who has been creative for any length of time will tell you that you are not in charge of the creative process, not even when your muse lets you think I am.  My muse does no such thing–she doesn’t want to give me the impression I might have control over the situation.  She wakes me at three in the morning and keeps me up past bedtime, loves to visit me in the shower, and generally appears when I’m unprepared, naked, and possibly dripping wet.

Currently in progress: two books, one fiction, one nonfiction.