I spent years 5 & 6 of primary school in a special class learning to read. It was right then that I wanted to write. It was right then that I made my first attempt.
A man came to our class. I remember nothing about him except that he listened to my desire to write and and gave be a workbook to write my first story. It was about man's first trip to Mars and I tried to write for about three pages of it before giving up. (I still have that first story in my head,but it has evolved a bit.) I found the book years later, it was unreadable. Back then I could just barely read, and could not write, but I love stories.
So I learnt to live stories in my head and learned to read. A first it was books, starting with the Hobbit and followed by other fantasy and Science Fiction, then I found comics. I became the ultimate Marvel Comics fan.I tried to buy every comic that Marvel put out, and succeed for a while. In the end I had a collection of over 6,000 comics. A few non Marvel, but not many. I dreamt of writing comics and created a whole bunch of Super Heroes, I still remember them all. I tried to find out how to write comics, but for a high school kid in Thompson Road, Speers Point (look it up) it was just to hard. So I kept making story's in my head.
The big problem was that I was just so bad a spelling and writing in general. I tried to over come this by asking my mum to buy a Commodore 64 for me while holidaying in Hong Kong. Instead, she got some computer that was really popular in Hong Kong but, not here. I tried to do stuff on it, but it didn't work out. I kept making stories in my head.
My choice to leave my job and go to Theological College forced me to learn how to write. I had to write a lot of essay, some up to 5,000 words, and I had to write the quickly. Looking back now, I realize just how much I learnt about writing through those years. A lot of my essays read like stories.
After College I got involved in children's Ministry. When you work with children you tell a lot of stories. Twenty five years later, I decide to have a go at being a Pastor of a church. My stories are a lot like stories, which everyone liked. However, the other parts of being a Pastor didn't work out to well for me. I also started making up bed time stories for my daughter.
I never forgot my desire to write, but it really come back to me just over three years ago. I had all the things I needed. Time, my job was only part time, desire and a computer that had decant spell check. Although it doesn't always work.
I started writing. I had my first story punished in an anthology in time for my mum to see it before she died. I'm still writing, but not much in the last six months.
My best guess is that it was 40 years ago sometime in 2015 that the man gave me a work book to write my first story.
This, in brief, is how I came to be here.
The wonderful publication that has done this marvellous thing is SQ Mag, the International Speculative Fiction eZine, in it's 25th edition.
