Member-only story
Unto The Breach Once More — or How I Decided To Become A Writer
I remember vividly the first time I realized I wanted to become a writer. It was 1986, I was 12 years old, and I had just bought my very own first computer. With some help from my parents I had managed to save up the 6000 Swedish Kronor required to buy an Amiga 500, and I was understandably quite excited about it.
Like most kids that age, my main reason for buying a computer was to play games, and possibly learn something about programming. I didn’t really have any more sophisticated plans for it than that.
However, bundled with the computer was a word processing package. I had never heard of word processing before, but it looked kind of interesting. I forget the actual brand, but it was a fairly fancy one by the standards of the day; fully WYSIWYG with the writing area made to look like a sheet of paper, lots of different fonts, and other nice features. And as I sat there, looking at the pristine white page I was struck by a realization: I could write a book!
Did I mention I was an avid reader? A boy who would spend every moment his parents let him with his nose buried in a book? Who above all else loved fantasy and horror novels? Well, I have now.
I decided it was time for me to write the next, great fantasy novel. And so I set to writing.
