Wow. I've written a lot of these. I had no idea that this would last quite so long, but here we are. I wondered what the hell I should write about, and I thought why not write about writing? A lot of you know that I decided to become a writer when I was a little kid reading Hardy Boys books, The Haunted Fort in particular. And I may have mentioned this before, but considering my interests, I had a very unusual first mentor.
Vivian Schurfranz wrote historical novels geared toward young adults, usually girls. When I was in junior high, she visited our school to talk about writing, and I got super excited. She was the first author I'd ever met. She also made a presentation on the subject at the Elmhurst Public Library, which I also went to. As she signed a copy of one of her books for me, I got to talk to her about writing. She wanted to see some of my work, so she gave me her address in Evanston, and I started sending her stories to see what she thought.
She encouraged my writing a great deal, probably more than she should have, and I got to know what writing for a living was like at an early age. It helped me a great deal in my development as an author, and I owe a great deal to her generosity. I can't tell you how great she made me feel as a kid whose sole ambition was to one day have a book out there with my name on the cover. She made me think like this was something I could actually do.
Lo and behold.
I don't know why our correspondence fell off. I found a lot of old letters recently, one of which can be seen above, and I used to write to a lot of people back then. For some reason during high school I fell out of the habit. Out of curiosity I looked her up online. I doubted that she would still be around, and it surprised me to find out that she passed as recently as 2018. I wish I'd continued our letters. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have liked the stuff I write about now, but it would have been nice to check back in with her.
I wonder if, without her influence, I would be an author today. I'm certain I'd still be writing. That's not in question. But would I be a published author? I don't think so.
Inspiration comes to us in strange ways. I'll bet you didn't expect to learn this about me today. Here's to #700 . . .
OK, I just remembered I did touch on this before, but I didn't go into a lot of detail. And that was waaaaaaay back before I even hit my 50th GF column. This one's better anyway.
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