While this seems like a perfectly reasonable question to ask anyone who has taken the time and effort to write a book, it is, oddly, a question I never directly asked myself. From a young age, fitting the world around me — what I saw, what I heard, what I thought, what I was feeling, what excited me, frightened me, interested me — into words and stories always seemed such a natural impulse that I didn’t spend any time wondering about the source of the impulse itself. Thinking about it now, however, embarking upon a more serious approach to writing, I suppose it had to do with a couple of simple factors.

First, I can remember being fascinated by the different ways words could be fit together to paint different pictures in my mind and take me to new places. I read a great deal as a young boy, and somehow developed a beginner’s level appreciation for how words could manage to produce emotions and generate reactions unlike those available from other ordinary activities. Somewhat, I imagine, the way another person might be fascinated by how wires and nuts and bolts and other devices can be fit together to do remarkable things, or how piano keys struck in certain ways can do amazing things.

Second, I can remember wanting to give it a try myself, after finishing a particularly compelling book or story — the way a young person entranced with golf or short-wave radios or the violin will naturally want to try them out themselves. Third, I was lucky to have encouragement, from parents and teachers. This encouragement gave me the internal confidence that, in enjoying writing, I had latched onto something I was passably good at. And everyone wants to do more of something if they are good at it.

Finally — and now I am now wandering into makeshift psychoanalytic territory, about which I actually know nothing, but here goes — perhaps fitting situations and people into stories provided a sense of control. I created the characters; they did what I wanted. I created the story; whatever happened, I made it happen. I think the world can rapidly become a perplexing place to a young person who is trying to understand it, figure out why and how it works the way it does — and it would not surprise me if somehow writing became a device that helped me process, package, organize, and manage all these perplexities as a child, then as an adolescent, when the world becomes even more complicated.

Today, though, it is different — but also the same. Using words to their fullest still gives me a great pleasure. I like to move them around in ways that take full advantage of their immense versatility. But it is more than that — simply tinkering with language would strike me as a pointless pastime. Life is a gauntlet of forks, u-turns, byways, shortcuts, speed-lanes, dead-ends, dirt roads; decisions small and large needing to be made without benefit of maps. I like to write about how different people, in different circumstances, navigate this confusing gauntlet — what they get right, what they get wrong, their motivations, the consequences and unforeseen ripples; and the inner aspects of their progress forward – or backward or sideways. I have a hope that the reader may see something of themselves in the story, and thereby interact with the book, or a character, or a situation — and even find cause to reflect upon how the story might bear upon themselves. All, I hope, leaving the reader to finish the book with a satisfied nod, and the feeling that the author did, in fact, do a decent job of telling a story that was both thought-provoking and a pleasure to read.