IN THE BEGINNING. . .

I started writing when I was five and half or six, dictating song lyrics to my father, who copied them down at the kitchen table. In some ways, he was my first blog. I wrote song lyrics, poetry (usually for girls I had crushes on), short stories, and nearly didn't pass 6th grade because I was working on my "book."
In 8th grade, based on an assignment from our Language Arts teacher, I began a daily journal. I kept that journal until my first year of college when "real life" caught up and made it difficult to contiunue. Fortunately or unfortunately, that means that my entire high school education is documented on paper in four blue notebooks that now sit in the back of my bedroom closet.
In some ways, that was my second blog.
My first "official" submission was in 1977 when, at the age of 13, I typed three poems on my best friend's mother's typewriter and, having seen my first copy of Poet's Market, sent them off to Modern Bride magazine.
Needless to say, I have always been extraordinarily secure in my masculinity to pull of a stunt like that during junior high school.
When the inevitable rejection slip came back a few months later, I'd almost forgotten about it, but the thrill of knowing that my three poems had been read--and considered--by a big time editor thrilled me. I'd been bitten by the writing/publishing bug. . .and good.
For some reason, I didn't start sending out regularly until I was in college (a high school and college stint as a journalist took care of my desire to write and publish), but toward the end of college, I was writing--and reading--more poems and wanted to get mine out there.
I went to the local library and wrote down some addresses from the previous year's Poet's Market and sent out three submissions. After a few months, I got back two rejections and a long letter on yellow legal paper from the editor of the third journal, The Yellow Butterfly, that told me to keep submitting and that he might have actually published one of the poems I'd submitted, if his magazine hadn't just folded.
It was all the encourgement I needed. That was in 1988.
I've been submitting ever since.