A Writer's Life For Me

A long, long time ago, I decided I wanted to be a writer. I was still in high school at the time. Writing looked like an easy life.

You type things. Someone pays you to publish what you wrote.

How tough can that be?

Now, that I've been writing full-time for more than two decades, I wonder where the time all went.

Where is that novel I started in 1971? And the sequel?

I recently came across some poems I wrote back in the day. My high school had a literary magazine. I was on the staff that chose what went in. All my stuff was rejected. Reading it now, I'm not surprised.

But that rejection didn't stop me. I kicked a few trash cans and went back to my typewriter. With each draft my writing painstakingly grew better. I think it has. If it hadn't, you wouldn't have read this far, would you?

And I've never run out of topics to write about. My favorite, however, is growing up in Belleville in the 1960s.

Who knew, then, that it was so great? TV was black and white, gasoline was less than two-bits a gallon.

We drank tap water and ate red M&Ms, and took deep, deep breaths running behind the 'mosquito man' spraying DDT to kill the tiny pests.

Who knew, when I was a kid, that I could put down a few words and bring back to life the Brookdale soda delivery men? Or recall with amazing precision the pigeon coops where my father raised his homers.

It took a life time, but I think a writer's life is more than I ever thought it would be.

A Writer's Life For Me

Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.