In the spirit of Letterman (interesting wordplay, that, for a piece like this), here’s a countdown of the top ten reasons why I write:

10. The page doesn’t talk back.

Ba-dum-bum…  But sometimes it does have that chilling blank stare.

9. My pen (keyboard) actually does what I ask.

Ba-dum-bum…  Be careful what you ask for!

8. Along with a prominent Do Not Disturb sign (which is as essential to a writer as pen and paper), writing provides good cover for catching a few Z’s.

Ba-dum-bum…  But that’s not the way to make dreams come true.

7. I can make things up without being accused of making things up.

Ba-dum-bum…  As they say, if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance…

6. Words are the best kind of friends, always ready to play.

Ba-dum-bum…  But too much of a good thing…

5. I’ve been told I can’t think on my feet, so I compensate by thinking on my butt.

Ba-dum-bum…  But sometimes I find it hard not to make an ass of myself.

4. Writing is the only profession with a respectable excuse for slacking off.

Ba-dum-bum…  Whoever heard of Accountant’s Block?

3. Since I can’t afford therapy, I write.

Ba-dum-bum…  But you’re sure to go insane if you ever try to calculate the opportunity cost buried in revision.

2. Since I’m a wimp, writing allows me to exact revenge on reviled relatives and frenemies without fear of reprisal.

Ba-dum-bum…  Don’t forget the “This is a work of fiction” disclaimer on that copyright page!

And the number one reason why I write (drum roll):

1.  Writing is the best soul food around.

Ba-dum-bum…  But eating your words is not recommended.

Perhaps this old Latin proverb captures best what motivates me most: verba volant, scripta manent. In other words, being mortal (and more painfully aware of it every year), it’s nice to think I might leave behind something that could stand the test of time. So, I write.

After spending two decades in the field of technology, Bill Gourgey put his expertise to work as a full-time writer, releasing the first book in his “Glide” trilogy in 2011.

Gourgey served as a managing partner at Accenture where he was awarded a patent for Software Service Architectures. Now, he spends time as a venture capital partner at Omni Capital and a technology advisor for startup companies. He is a member of the Alpha Sigma Mu and Tau Beta Pi engineering honor societies.

Gourgey’s first science fiction novel, “Glide” (2011, Jacked Arts Press), has drawn more than 5 million reads on Wattpad.com, and the second book in the series, “Nu Logic,” received a highly coveted starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Gourgey has contributed to Wattpad, PatrickMcMullan.com, Wavecloud and Enterprise Systems Journal. He is also the author of the short story collection “Unfamiliar Fruit” (2012, Jacked Arts Press) and the book of poetry “Outside the Box” (2007-2008, Jacked Arts Press).

I write because I read.

The first books I read on my own were Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “LIttle House” series about a pioneer family continually on the move. I was seven, and my family had recently moved from Los Angeles to a small Oregon town at the foot of the Siskiyou Mountains. This was in 1964, but much of “Laura’s” 19th century experience–from her minute observations of new landscapes to her difficulties fitting in at new schools–echoed in my own life. I re-read the books so many times that whole passages would bubble up verbatim in my head as I collected tadpoles in the creek behind our house or lay in the dark beside my sister, waiting for sleep.

At that point, it was no use reading the books yet again. Instead, I fashioned a log cabin out of my mother’s church hatbox and outfitted it with an assortment of miniature dolls and furniture made of empty spools and matchboxes, spinning adventures for this small family as they blazed the Oregon Trail. The narrative was probably a mash-up of things I’d read and things I’d lived–there was, I recall, a baby brother doll, with orange hair like my brother’s made from a cotton ball dipped in curry powder. I’m sure the whole kaboodle looked pretty motley–I’m no good at manuals–but in second grade I wasn’t any good at writing, either. What I wanted was to answer Wilder with stories of my own; to continue the conversation I felt she’d started.

When I took my first creative writing class, in college, our young and handsome instructor imparted tips on craft that seemed revelatory (show, don’t tell; make your characters want something right off the bat). He also urged us would-be writers to read as much as possible. This sounded laughably obvious, like telling members of the football team to be sure to get plenty of exercise. But as the term progressed, it became clear that some students hadn’t–and didn’t–read very much. Their impulse to write seemed less reactive and more organic than mine, to spring from an internal well of imagination I didn’t possess.

“Creativity” was big on campuses in the late 1970s (you could even take a class in it), and it bothered me that a quiz administered by the university psych department revealed that I was too cautious, my habits too orderly, my homework too promptly finished, for me to qualify as a creative personality. And the stories I wrote for the instructor (himself a natty dresser with neat penmanship) were usually a response to something I’d read: about a trip to a new place, a romance gone wrong, an old person looking back on life. Writing, I felt, was an ongoing conversation between someone long dead or far away, and me.

I moved to Spain after college and taught English, and then moved a lot more, to Boston, New York, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Tepoztlan, Mexico. It was several years before I had enough freelance newspaper and magazine assignments to be able to say that I made my living as a writer.

With journalism, the “why” of writing is never in doubt: your editor gives you an assignment, you do it and hand it in–it’s like having homework for the rest of your life.  But I continued to write short stories, and here the “why” was less clear, especially after I was married and had two children. I could claim that I turned down assignments and spent money I wasn’t earning on babysitters because it turned out that I actually was creative, because I had a deep-seated drive to invent and imagine. The truth is that some other writer was doing the imagining first, and that was what always got my own wheels turning. Living much of my day in another language, and writing what I hoped were indisputable facts, I looked forward to sinking under the covers at night with a novel or short story collection in English. In the early 90s, before books could be turned into bytes, they were expensive to mail or took up precious space in suitcases, so I chose carefully, and reread a lot. And then I’d want to sit down and reply to my invisible, distant, dear friends.

The British novelist Anthony Powell once said that when writers read they’re always thinking about how they’d have told the same story. I don’t think he meant that they’re nitpicking or criticizing (though they also do that) as much as working out what they’ll say when they get their turn at the mic.

Of all the arts, we view writing as the least collaborative–songs are written and movies made and dances performed and even murals painted with and alongside others. A book written “with” someone else is ghostwritten, maybe bogus. Writing is only properly done alone, we’re told, in that hard-won room of one’s own. To say that you rely on others for your ideas, your techniques, your stories, seems to skate dangerously close to confessing to plagiarism. But I’m not talking here about about passing off someone else’s work as your own. I’m saying that stories, like language itself, evolved from a long-ago mother source. Nobody is born speaking a language–you listen, imitate, practice, until your words sound like you. And you have to know the story–in as many iterations as possible, as close as you can get to the ur-version grunted around the campfire while the mastodon sizzled–before you can tell yours.

You have to keep reading.

Kathleen Wheaton’s articles and interviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Smithsonian, The Paris Review, Bethesda Magazine, and other publications. Her short story collection, Aliens and Other Stories, won the 2013 Washington Writers Publishing House Prize and will be published October 15. Her website is www.kathleenwheaton.com.

As I think back over the years, I can’t officially pinpoint the beginning of my interest in writing. It’s something that I’ve always done. Yet it still took me a loooooong time to realize that my purpose was to write.  As crazy as it may sound, the thought simply had never occurred to me.

As a kid, I used to keep a journal.  Growing up as an only child, this book became my companion.  It knew me better than anyone else.  It was filled with my school adventures, my dreams of the future, and my questions about the world around me. During this time in my life, I also began writing short stories about my favorite television characters.  For example, an idea such as the Muppets meeting Lucy and Ricky Ricardo could potentially keep me busy for days!  As my writing ability increased, so did the intricacies of my stories, which later evolved into writing poems and songs.  I quickly fell in love with rhyme.  It was a powerful platform for expressing emotion. In fact, my passion for rhyme and my interest in old English literature would later inspire my first published book which was a fully rhyming epic-adventure.

Writing became a part of my identity. It’s what kept me grounded during the difficult times of my childhood. While most people read books as their means of escaping reality, it was writing that became my personal outlet. Nothing excited me more than a blank page. I could be anyone; I could do anything; I could go to any location -past, present, or future. The possibilities were endless. I needed only to imagine, and my ideas became a new reality.

Over the years that followed, writing fueled many of my personal and professional decisions. However, it wasn’t obvious to me.  Think of it as a fish not being aware of the water it swims in.  Writing was as natural to me as walking, and like walking, it just wasn’t my primary focus. This, understandably, created an internal conflict within myself because I was literally ignoring, if not working against, my nature.

There were many times as a young adult that I felt restless and dissatisfied. No matter what I did or what career path I took, there was always something within me bubbling just beneath the surface. Even though I was actually working in media, which was my chosen field of study in school, I was never completely fulfilled.  It wasn’t until I was 30 years old that I finally realized what had been tugging at me.  My restlessness stemmed directly from neglecting my desire to write.  Writing had been the cornerstone of everything I’d ever done up until that point, and it now needed to be the centerpiece.  I owed it to myself to do so.

Sitting down to write my first book filled me with great pride.  Every day I looked forward to the block of time I devoted to writing.  I enjoyed sneaking away to type a few lines or quickly whispering them into my digital voice recorder while at work.  It took what seemed a lifetime, but I’d finally discovered my purpose, and now my goal is to use writing to help others find theirs.

I can honestly laugh at myself now as I think back on the amount of time and energy I spent changing companies, moving into different positions, and searching for something that was within me all along.  Life knew I was supposed to be a writer long before I ever did. And I know it to be the truth because every word I write brings me peace. I often tell my readers that the voice within you will never lead you astray. Nowadays, I take great effort to continue listening to my own. Because every day it tells me to “Just Keep Writing.”

Demethius Jackson is a fiction writer from Washington, DC. He is the author of The Realmsic Conquest book series, which chronicles the struggles of the only magical kingdom in existence. Since its establishment, the kingdom has been ravaged by endless warfare, and must undergo a transformative quest to find ever elusive peace.

At its core, The Realmsic Conquest is symbolic of the life-journey we all must partake to discover our own purpose and peace. Born into adversity, Jackson himself coped with extreme hardships and desperation throughout his life. During his early adulthood, he experienced further frustrations as he tried to establish himself in the world. Yet, continuous encouragement and guidance allowed him to discover his hidden potential and identify his chosen path. He later realized that his personal struggles were widely common among young people. Now, through his coming-of-age stories, he intends to encourage and inspire young adults who are hoping to find themselves, and reach their own potential.

Jackson is an alumnus of American University’s School of Communications. Through his ten year career, his written works have spanned numerous forms of media such as music and television. He has also held positions at global media and cinema companies.

In July of 2010, Jackson published his first book. Initially releasing The Realmsic Conquest as a rhyming epic-adventure, he spent the following years vastly expanding the story of the Realm. Now in 2013, he will be publishing his much anticipated full-length novel entitled, The Hero of Legend.

http://realmsic.com
http://demethius.com
https://twitter.com/Demethius_J
http://instagram.com/demethius_j

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

-Emily Dickinson

As long as I can remember the words of others have lived inside me. Sometimes the cadences of a poem, like the Dickinson one above, start thrumming in my brain.   If I am lucky, images and sounds begin to form, born of the original words, but setting forth in a new direction. I am a thief, hi-jacking other writers and riding away in their vehicles.

Here are some words I stole from a friend:  “They got the color wrong.” I don’t remember now what she was referring to, but to me the words conjured up a teenager in a funeral home, inspecting a bad make-up job on her dead teacher.   I heard the girl’s voice coolly analyzing the teacher’s embalmed face, and I could see her, wearing a black skirt and white blouse donned especially for the funeral. The girl’s name was Valerie Martin, she wanted to be a cosmetologist, and, luckily, she liked to write in a journal. From the pages of her journal other characters took shape. One was that deceased teacher, Bertha Trombetta, an embittered woman who was able to wreak havoc from the grave by attempting to blow the whistle on a school testing scam.  Trombetta’s vindictive act impacted more characters, especially her fellow teacher, Charlotte Murphy, who was stagnating in a chilly marriage.

I read a memoir about a father who wore a blue brocade robe. A blue brocade robe?  I knew I had to borrow that robe for Charlotte’s unfaithful husband, a man madly in love with himself. But I needed plot and structure.  Back to burglary.  I turned to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, put her plot points into a modern setting, and -voila!  A whole novel – Ms. Murphy’s Makeover – emerged from just a few stolen words and the image of a blue brocade robe.

Perhaps I write because I can. I am not good at sports, puzzles, or games. My sense of direction is non-existent.  But I am good at words.  It is a gift my mother gave me. On her lap I learned about Peter Rabbit, and Babar the elephant, and Heidi and the grandfather on the mountain. As a preschooler I sat there, fighting sleep, begging my mother to read the books over and over again.  I couldn’t wait to learn to read myself.  And from reading and day-dreaming the writing came.  I loved writing compositions. I spewed them out fast and faster – readers of Madeline will recognize Miss Clavel here –  stealing phrases, whole plots, character traits, settings,  everything, from the books I’d read.  I wrote sequels to novels, imagining the characters in new situations. I re-wrote television shows, turned them into plays and fables, transforming animals to people and people to animals. I got lots of attention from this, lots of praise, and when we are praised we practice and when we practice we get better.  Nothing succeeds like success.  (I stole that.)

So is that then, why I write? I am not sure. I can only say that, on the eve of a big birthday, the driver of an empty school bus ran a red light and hit my car. I was lucky that day, so lucky, in that although my car was totaled I emerged without a scratch. It was close, though. I almost didn’t make the birthday.  I could easily have been killed.  At that point in my life, I was not writing. I was totally immersed in supporting the lives of my husband and children.  But although this was my chosen path, I had a surprising reaction. “Not enough!” I said.  The full and happy life I had was not enough. I wanted more. What did I want, I asked myself. And from deep inside the answer came. I wanted to write.

And that is what I have been doing ever since.  I listen for the words of others, shelter them inside myself, and, as with Emily Dickinson, the words begin to live that day. And that is why I write. You might try it yourself. Why not steal this?  “They got the color wrong.”

Jacqueline Grandsire Goldstein, a Chappaqua resident, has been studying at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. 

Of course, like others who’ve answered the “why I write” question, I learn a great deal about myself during the process: writing is a minute examination of some facet of living (like, in this case, writing itself), subjecting it to the microscope. But while that is often useful, it is the mental act of creating sentences, and then paragraphs, which fills my heart with joy. I am a great rewriter, believing each revision only improves the draft; my heart lifts as each sentence receives its polish.

Why is the act itself so pleasurable? That I cannot answer. I am simply grateful that it is so. And I feel fortunate that over the years I’ve been able to create the space where I can write. Or hike in nearby woods. Or garden. They all feed the same spiritual impulse in me.

Perhaps it is simply that I am a writer, the way others find themselves strongly drawn to architecture or music or sculpture. This happens to be the medium through which the mysterious life force—what some call “the muse”–takes shape.

Only later, much later, do I consider my audience, and what readers might glean from my words. While I am writing, my focus is entirely inward. That, I believe, is what makes it so pleasurable, and ultimately, pure.

Dr. Joan Steinau Lester is an award-winning commentator and author of four critically acclaimed books: Eleanor Holmes Norton:Fire In My Soul; The Future of White Men and Other Diversity Dilemmas; Taking Charge: Every Woman’s Action Guide; and her first novel, Black, White, Other: The Search For Nina Armstrong. She has won the NLGJA Seigenthaler Award in journalism and the Arts & Letters Creative Nonfiction Finalist Award. Taking Charge was nominated as a Best Women’s Book by the San Francisco Women’s Heritage Museum and Mama’s Child was a Bellwether Prize finalist. After receiving her doctorate in multicultural education, Dr. Lester served as the Executive Director of the Equity Institute, which pioneered the diversity wave of the ’80s and ’90s, for sixteen years. As a member of a biracial family, Lester’s lifelong passion has been writing about issues of racial identity. Her former husband and father of her children was black; she has been with a female partner/spouse for over thirty years. Lester’s writing has appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including Essence, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, and Cosmopolitan. She lives in Northern California.

As a teenager, I tried to journal, and I’d get off to a good start.  But invariably after a week of recording the dramatic events that herald passage into adulthood, I’d read what I wrote and think to myself how inane it all was, and I would lose interest.  It would be much later in life, after my divorce, when a good friend bought me “The Artist’s Way,” that I’d begin to write every day.   The book provided explicit and concrete instructions for reclaiming one’s lost creativity.  Eager to do something to fill in the void left by the absence of my husband, and my desire to be distracted from the grief I felt for something lost forever, I embraced the task of journaling every day.  I followed the book’s author Julia Cameron’s strong advice not to read what I had written for 90 days.  Finally!  I was able to write and write, and I filled notebook after notebook with the free-floating thoughts that are easily accessible right after awakening each day.

As my 50^th birthday neared, I assembled a bucket list of sorts, like those of many middle-aged people who have become fully aware that they’ve traversed the hump, where enough people and opportunities have been lost, leading to the stunning realization that: life doesn’t last forever, and anything can change in an instant.  My desire to write something good enough to be published figured highly on that list, and I realized that it was time to stop thinking about it, and to take action.

Ironically, it was during one of the most challenging periods of my mother’s life when she was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor, and consequently for me, where time became even more precious, that I became fully committed to the process of writing on a regular basis.  My role was to shepherd my mother through the medical system and help her navigate the myriad sectors of her life.  I found solace during those quiet afternoons together, while she drifted in and out of sleep in a warm room, because she always felt cold, arranging my words in surprisingly decent fashion.

As a medical educator, I teach my medical students to be terse, to omit all superfluous details from the history and physical note.   I counsel them that a good observer who has elicited a wealth of patient information needs to learn how to distill all of the details into a succinct and organized note.   However, what makes that patient a person is not intuitively obvious in the medical note, and those of us who are happy in our profession know it is that permission to enter into the intersection between our patients’ medical, psychological, cultural and personal lives that make the practice of medicine so fulfilling.   The medical narrative allows for the filling in of those details missing in the medical note as well as the fleshing out of who our patients are beyond the core of their entry ticket into the consultation room.

I have found that writing helps me make sense out of messy and impossible situations and offers the opportunity to fully clarify my perceptions and feelings.   It takes a lot of audacity and courage to be a writer.  You have to believe and be confident that people are interested in what you have to say.  My mother, a bridge player, has always told me that I underplay my hand and that I need to recognize my assets.  It took a long time to rebuild the confidence and joy I had as a child, and to reclaim the courage to “live out loud.”  After all, writing is about exposure and leaving oneself open to the barrage (hopefully) of opinions about what you’re trying to convey.  Writing requires a willingness to be vulnerable.  I like too that I can bring to life the dignified and interesting lives of patients and the contemporary practice of medicine to serve as an impetus for necessary change and to educate in more global fashion; I have always liked translating medical information into fully digestible and understandable form.  So, writing allows me to do what I like.

When I was in college, I belonged to an organization called House Plan Association.  Its official events and activities were all designed to help its members live up to its motto, “Let people know who you are.”  I am happy to be at a stage in life where I think that my perceptions about my personal life and my patients and my work have value.   I find that I am comfortable with the idea of exposing my thoughts for all to see, and letting “people know who I am.”

Maria Maldonado is a primary care physician who has been engaged in medical education for over a decade. Her interests include the intersection of medical education and primary care for underserved populations and health concerns of undocumented immigrants. She has written for KevinMD.com and recently had an essay published in the “A Piece of My Mind” section of JAMA, and she contributes to a blog on perspectives of program directors of internal & family medicine. She is working on several personal essays as well as medical narratives highlighting the challenges of the contemporary practice of medicine. She can be followed on MMaldonadoMD on twitter.

In my earliest memory—I guess I was two or three years old—I am stepping through a doorway into the most amazing room I have ever seen. The carpet is thick and soft, the couch is trim and ladylike with its red floral fabric and curved wooden legs, and a small hallway leads to the biggest bed I have ever seen, dressed in dainty blue bedcoverings and piled high with overstuffed pillows in crisp, white pillowcases.

“This is our room!” my dad says, and as my sister and I giggle and pounce on the bed, I tell myself that we must be the luckiest family in the world, to have both a regular home and also this special, extra room that belongs just to us.

The next memory I have of this room takes place when I am about five. We are coming home from a restaurant on a cool autumn evening, and I suggest to my parents that we spend the night in “our room,” since we haven’t been there in a while.

My parents seem to agree—but then I realize we are walking right into our regular old apartment building. “No, not this one. The room!” I say.

“That’s where we’re going,” my father tells me as he unlocks the door.

“No, not our apartment. Our room. Our room!”

“Here’s your room.” My mother points to the bedroom I share with my sister. “Your room. Right here.”

To this day, I have no idea if that room from long ago was real or if I just dreamed it up. But the one thing I do know is how lost and alone I felt that night, as my parents took off their coats and went about their business. I was the only one who remembered an amazing, magical room with thick carpet and an enormous bed, a room that had made me very happy. I realized I would always be the only one who remembered.

I didn’t think about that room again for many years. But then one night, in a way, it returned.

It happened soon after I left my job as a writer with a fast-paced business newspaper to move to Scarsdale with my husband and two-year-old son. I was truly grateful to be a stay-at-home mom and wouldn’t have had it any other way—yet this new life of tying and untying shoelaces, buttoning and unbuttoning coats, pulling mittens on and off, and and filling and emptying sand buckets took adjusting. The days were long, and the moments of delight were interspersed among hours of mind-numbing routines. There were times when the predictability of it all felt like living on a planet with too much gravity.

And then one evening when my husband was working late and David was asleep, I happened to turn the TV on to a reunion special about the Monkees, that Hollywood-manufactured sixties-era boy band whose members rocketed to stardom thanks to a hit television show, teen-idol looks and tuneful pop songs.

Now, nobody remembers the anguish of being a teenager more than I do, but watching that TV show, I suddenly felt only the good parts of being thirteen years old. How thrilling life could be when you still didn’t know who you were, which meant that you could become anybody. The world was huge, its arms wide open, and dreams could change in a flash to real life. Back then, I truly believed that one day I would travel to Hollywood and meet Davy Jones, and he would fall in love with me. Who could say it wouldn’t happen? Curled up on the living room sofa opposite the warm glow of the TV, I experienced all over again the sweet agony of infatuation, when even the shine of your crush’s hair is so beautiful, it can bring you to tears.

It felt a bit like going back to that room from long ago.

With single-minded determination, I schlepped David to various Blockbuster stores over the next few days, looking for cassettes or CDs with old Monkees songs, for DVDs with old Monkeees episodes, so I could come home and listen and watch some more. And sure enough, the songs and episodes kept all those feelings fresh—but only for a short while. Then they lost their power. I wondered: Was there no way I could save those amazing feelings of potential and possibility? Was there no way I could package them, to take out whenever I needed a lift?

And that’s when I realized the solution was to write.

It was back then that I started my novel, about a woman whose life is upended when she gets the chance to meet the teen idol she adored as a teenager. In my story, the woman is a magazine writer whose career has stagnated, and she learns while doing some article research that the teen idol from her past is now a small business owner living a few towns away. Through artifice, she arranges to meet him. And over the course of a few clandestine encounters, she begins to recapture the excitement for life she used to feel—but at what cost?

I finished that novel for the first time many years ago. I finished it for the second time a few years later, and I’m now working on my third rewrite. Of course, when my non-writer friends hear this, they look at me with disbelief: Why spend year after year rewriting the same story? And I understand their point, since they no doubt believe the only goal of writing a novel is to publish it. But I know there’s much more to writing.

Why do I write? I write to reenter those wonderful rooms from the past that exist in my head and my head alone. I write to feel all those thick carpets under my toes and jump on all those cushy and pillow-packed beds. I write to rediscover wonderful thoughts I once had and amazing things I once felt, because once I write them, I own them. I can revisit those places and those feelings whenever I want, and if my words don’t quite capture all I think they should, I can rewrite until they do.

Don’t get me wrong—I’d love to see this manuscript get published. Why wouldn’t I? But I decided a long time ago that even if it never ends up on a publisher’s list, it still means the world to me. It has brought so much back to me. In fact, I have this little fantasy that one day a gazillion years from now, when my life has slowed down and is nearing its end, I will have refurnished and repopulated all the far-off rooms I once knew and loved. And I’ll just sit back and enjoy them, one by one.

I write to find that that enormous bed with its dainty blue bedcoverings and overstuffed pillows. I write so I can make it mine for good.

—

Barbara Solomon Josselsohn is a freelance magazine writer specializing in home and family topics. Her articles and essays appear in Consumers Digest, Parents, American Baby, The New York Times, Westchester Magazine, Mamazina, and Big Apple Parent, as well as online at Consumersearch.com. She has studied novel writing at Sarah Lawrence College and is in the process of completing her first novel, The Last Dreamer, about a woman who meets the teen idol she adored as a teenage.