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| Jennifer Wolf Kam |
Words have
always been my friend. From the earliest days of my childhood, when I was
delighted by tales of fairies, princesses and pokey puppies, through my grade
school years when I crafted my very own books out of construction paper and
crayon, they have been there. In middle school, the words I penned were filled
with emotion and wonder, and they sustained me through the harrowing teen
years.
I wrote
my first novel inside my 8th grade wood shop notebook. On the first page of my notebook, you can still see where I
took notes on how to use a T-square ruler. After that, my words—pages and pages
of them—have nothing to do with 8th grade wood shop (belated apologies to Mr. Kennedy.) The novel I
wrote in it, well, it was a little too similar to a book I’d just read. But it
was a start, a leap actually, because for the first time ever, I’d written
something longer than five pages. Remarkably, it had a beginning, a middle and
an end that actually (sort of) made sense.
