It’s impossible to boil down “why I write” to one event or experience. From my earliest foggy memories, it’s clear I’ve always been drawn to books and words – compelled to gather them, driven to string them together. Some people collect Hummels. Others knit scarves. I collect prose and knit sentences.

My writing life (my entire life) has evolved from hundreds, perhaps thousands, of reading- and writing-related experiences. I remember the regular library trips with my parents as a little girl. I embrace the epiphany of parallelism, learned from my senior high school English teacher. There have been countless books read and absorbed, from Winnie the Pooh and The Liar’s Club to On Writing and The Invisible Mountain. As a journalist, I have interviewed dozens of people who enlightened and intrigued me – neurosurgeons, custodians, CEOs, teachers, politicians, garbage truck drivers, Black Jack dealers and more. As a novelist, I have researched historical events and probed the human psyche. My office files are stuffed with snippets of prose, inspiring statements and beautifully constructed paragraphs written by novices and icons alike. My bookshelves overflow.

Collectively, this is why I write and share my writing with others. These experiences are simply too remarkable to keep all to myself.

http://www.jessicamccann.com/

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