I like to say that I began writing before I knew how to write. By that I mean that I made up stories, acting them out with my dolls and stuffed animals, turning them into plays to perform with my neighborhood friends, or dictating them to my father, who would then type them out on the manual typewriter his father gave him when he was a young man. Writing, in my head and on paper, was my way of making sense of the world and my place in it.