I was just asked by my awesome new friend SARK to write about why I write. Now mind you, I write every day. For hours. Writing is what I do. I've written three books, countless magazine articles, and over 350 blog posts, in addition to the private journal writing nobody sees. Writing comes totally naturally to me. And yet, faced with this task, I found myself paralyzed. How do you write about writing? I mean I'm a big fan of Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird. And she does it so brilliantly! But I struggled. Then I muddled through. This is what came out.

From the time I was six, when a family friend gave me a leather-bound blank book and invited me to write in it, I have been a writer. I was offered my first publishing deal when I was 11 (I turned it down -- they were my private stories, after all. Sheesh!).

Grounding