J.K. Coi

MY WRITER STORY

So what is this really? My friend Maria Zannini has challenged me to tell my story and I'm not quite sure what to say. I mean, I've always been a writer, from the first words I learned to shape with the pencil clutched awkwardly in my chubby little palm.

All right, realistically, I wasn't "a writer" when I was four, but the seed was there already, and instead of having my parents read me books at night before bed, I'd already been making my own tales up in my head and telling my parents bedtime stories instead of the other way around.

But I guess my first real writer story is from grade 10 English class. I wrote this short piece called "Martians in the Kitchen", which was really about an fm radio that turns on all by itself every day just in time for one of those old school serial radio shows a la "War of the Worlds". Really, the radio is possessed with the spirit of a young girl's high school sweetheart, a jealous dead boyfriend who doesn't like that Charlene has gotten herself a new guy. Needless to say I was a HUGE reader of Stephen King, and horror ensues in bloody, graphic detail for the rest of the story.

I won a contest with that one.

Now I'm challenging everyone else to tell me their writer stories, and if you're not a writer, tell me the story of how you came to do the thing that you love doing best (I know what you're thinking, and no sex stories)