My Life of Words
If Samuel Johnson, who came to eminence as a writer and a lexicographer in the 1700s, was correct when he reportedly said, "No one but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money," then I can humbly testify to being a blockhead many times over, having spent most of my own life doggedly engaged in practicing a writer's craft, but never enriching myself, a record of unabated obstinacy that stands in hellbent defiance of Dr. Johnson's bold utterance. Expressing oneself through the written word, I have learned, is an exceedingly durable habit that, after solidly establishing itself in one's life, regardless of whether or not it delivers any manifest reward, does not easily lend itself to being broken. I do not remember the moment of clarity when I first knew, absolutely, that I wanted to be a writer. My mother, a sharp-witted Englishwoman with high standards who was raising me, her English-born child, in California as a result of my family moving from the United Kingdom ...