Adventures in Writing

The first story I remember writing was also my first published story. It was a short short humorous story about how, one night, I fooled my parents into thinking I was in bed by stuffing pillows under the blankets while I hid under the bed. The final line was, "It worked, they kissed the doll!" I not only wrote the story but also set the type and printed it on a rudimentary printing press in my classroom. My teacher was a very clever man whose unconventional teaching methods helped make me as good with words and numbers as I am today. When I was about 12 I tried writing my first feature-length book but didn't get past the first page. In my early high school years I excelled in science, tho in my last two years of high school, despite still fancying myself a scientist, I was getting better marks in English. I left school and followed the herd to university, where I started a science degree. My head was in it, but not my heart, and after one year I dropped out. I wrote some great letters home describing my adventures aboard a yacht sailing for three months around the Pacific Ocean. From hammerhead to hammerhand (I wasn't paid to think). When I was working on a building site out in Little Huia I would park my car on the water's edge and write poetry about the coastline there.