To be perfectly truthful, I'm not sure I had a moment when I decided I wanted to be a writer.  I do write (as Nike commercials say "Just do it!"); I do want to be creative; but an actual moment when I said this is what I want to be? 

Nah, don't think  so!  However, having said that, I had an assignment to write at least one entry in a weekly journal in senior English that made me realize that I liked expressing my thoughts in various ways.  I think many of my classmates considered it a chore, but I didn't and knew that I'd continue writing poetry and prose to some degree, if only for myself. Yet, even before that, I was writing some poetry to express my feelings.

I also made a concerted effort to attempt to write haiku a few years later. I wanted to try something disciplined, something with a strict form (which is changing, evolving, by the way, but I digress). I still haven't figured that out yet.  I'm still working at it, and plan on continuing.

I will continue to write, period.  And, for the most part, I don't consider myself a writer...just a pharmacist who happens to write. But to pinpoint a day or time, nope! 

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Oh yeah, while I am here writing.  I just finished the novel, House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III.  According to James Lee Burke, it is "one of the best American novels I've ever read." 

Larry Brown said, "I loved this novel...I just did not want to put it down." 

It was a finalist for the National Book Award, too, but to me, it was just a literary novel that was a bit above okay, and I'm not sure how well I liked it. In essence, a bureaucracy mistake sets off a chain reaction of events in the lives of all the characters (Kathy, Lester, and the Behrani family (Nadi, Esmail,and Massoud) leaving one with something akin to an anti-fairy tale, in which none of them lived happily ever after.  The characters were all likeable, and yet flawed as are all human beings.  Some were more likeable than others, depending on their part in the tragedy.  The saddest character was Nadi as she was the most lovable, the most noble of the novel as she tried to adjust her life to her family, her culture, and her new country.  

I expect my book group to disagree with me, too.  They're more literary than I. I'll know later today when we meet.