I was 15 when I first considered becoming a writer, and from that moment on I never seriously considered anything else. It seemed to me that this would be something I could do reasonably well, and that I would find it satisfying and fulfilling. I was conveniently unaware of the odds against succeeding in the profession, which was probably to my advantage. I wasn’t all that daring a youth, or all that persistent. I’ve since read about writers who wrote ten or fifteen or twenty books before they got anything published, and I don’t think I’d have stayed with it anywhere near that long.

Happily, I didn’t have to. By the time I was 19 I was selling stories to magazines, and a year later I had written and sold a novel, and I’ve been doing this ever since. My youthful fantasies didn’t include wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, which is just as well, as writing never did make me rich. Nor did it get me laid all that often, which was high on my youthful-fantasies list.

I can’t think of a better way to have spent my life.

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