Guest column in the Intell: Tucson Tragedy

I would never have known it was published so soon had Freda not emailed me. This article, which I slaved over, as I always do, took half an hour to write and five hours to perfect. Read it here.

It is so exciting for me to buy the newspaper - 75 cents - and find my article inside. Burdick's in Hatboro is where I drove around dinnertime. One of the Burdick women rang me up. I asked her to please throw out everything but Section A, which I then took and spread out over the copy machine, and found my article.

I read every single word.

What a thrill. The thrill that never ends. The first article I ever wrote was for the Hatboro Public Spirit. I'd taken a writing class at the adult evening school under Bryna Paston and she advised her students to begin by writing a story for the local paper.

I called them up and asked if I could write a story about a children's hair salon where I'd taken Sarah to get her hair cut. Sure, said the editor.

When I brought it in, the editor, whose name I forget, said he liked it and I had a distinct voice.

I was hooked and have been writing ever since. I'd call up the paper with my ideas, and they'd say, Write it!

I finally made it into the Inquirer but shortly after, they began a policy of no freelancers to protect their own reporters. I don't blame them at all.

When I had my first manic-psychotic episode, I called up the New Yorker. I have no idea what I was gonna say but luckily it was a Saturday so there was no editor available to talk to me. Undaunted, I sat down at my typewriter and penned a note to Life magazine that went something like this:

!!! *** .....

Yep! I did it all in punctuation marks.

It's very clever if you think about it but there was no method to it at all, just plain madness.