On encouragement

When I was in 9th grade, I had a class called Novels. All we did was read and read and read, and although I had to endure some abuse for carrying around a copy of Lisa, Bright and Dark for a couple of weeks, it was my favorite class.

One day, my teacher brought a special guest, a friend of hers who was a professional poet. She'd invited him to speak to our class about writing as a career.

As it happens, I had just completed my first novel, 83 hand-scrawled notebook pages about survival in the Far North titled Muktuk, The Story of a Banished Dog. Yeah, it was pretty much the Jack London ripoff it sounds like.

The Poet read it. I don't know whether he was just being nice or what, but he said that he liked it. He was especially impressed by its length, and predicted that in a few years I would have sweeping, thousand-page tomes on bookstore shelves across the country.

Of course I ended up writing silly little plays instead. But his encouragement stayed with me.

Today I'm driving up to Fort Lupton High School to see their production of Million Dollar Meatballs and to speak to the students about writing as a career.

Today I am that Poet.

I hope I do him justice.