5-Minute Memoir On The Craft of Writing

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

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As I travel down the river bank of the deep reservoirs of my memory, I’ll be completely honest with you, writing as a profession was not my chief-aim in life — at least not in the beginning.

When I was very young, and presented the question addressed above, my response always had more of an athletic appeal than that of a professional writing ambition. In fact, I wanted to be the first Hispanic in the NBA.

However, as a youngster, I was always writing — mainly poetry back then. I remember writing a piece for an assignment I had in one of my high school English classes where my teacher then asked me,

“William, have you ever thought about writing as a profession or career choice?”

Of course, my answer to that question was always, no. Mind you, my professional ambitions back then were always more athletically inclined. In fact, back then, my mind could never grasp the idea of writing as a profession.

You see, I wrote because I loved the act of writing. I loved the art of articulating thought through the written word. This was the kind of art form that I felt more free to express my feelings and emotions — it had more spiritual connotations to me than anything else.

In fact, there were quite a few of my fellow pupils — who after reading one of my poetry pieces — would refer to me as “emo.”

My mother would always tell me that I could achieve whatever I set my mind to, but it is was my father who essentially ended up assassinating my dream of becoming a professional basketball player — it was plain murder, I tell you.

You see, back then — especially in Jr. High — I wasn’t very tall and I was pretty thin in comparison to all the other players on the team. Because of this, my father would always tell me that I needed to think “realistically” in this area, and that a career in professional basketball was probably not going to be in the cards for me.

Well, that was when my dreams of becoming a professional basketball player began to dwindle out or fade away. But here’s the funny thing: As I got older I began to sprout up fast. In High School, I got to the point where I was…