All right, tell everyone how you got started writing.
That's easy, and not so easy. As a kid, I loved to read. I still read compulsively. I cannot imagine anyone writing fiction without loving to read themselves.
At some point when I was nine years old, I realized I wanted to create the same enjoyable feelings in others that I experienced from reading good stories.
Why this shift happened for me, I don't know.
But I started writing a "novel," though I'm sure I couldn't have written more than a few thousand words, at most. It imitated Edgar Rice Burroughs, my favorite author at that time.
I may have continued to write, except I made the beginner and childhood mistake of showing it to somebody. I named the heroine for the mother of my best friend, who lived next door, and she and everybody else but got me got a big laugh out of it. I realize now they didn't mean anything malicious, but I could no longer continue writing that story.
When I began writing again at the age of 16, I never showed my manuscripts to anybody except editors.
2. What happened at age 16?
I never lost that desire to be a writer. And at age 16 I decided it was time to start. I began reading The Writer and Writer's Digest magazines. My family bought me a high-quality Adler manual typewriter. I checked how to write books out of the library. I learned the professional manuscript format. I knew what science fiction and fantasy magazines were being published just from seeing them on sale and buying them. The writing magazines must have carried some kind of market reports as well, because I know my first submission was to Harry Harrison for a one-time anthology.
Soon, standing in line at the Post Office to mail off 10 X 13 manila envelopes, and receiving 9 X 12 manila envelopes in the mail, became a daily routine.
Read more of this interview.