I hate writing.
I love having written.
--Dorothy Parker

I feel pretty much the same way as Ms. Parker. And I'll do almost anything to avoid sitting down to write. Hence, my lengthy forays into acting and directing and computer programming--when I suspect I was supposed to be a writer all along.

Just recently, in fact, I was going through some old papers and discovered a long lost early work. Apparently, along about third grade, I had plunged into playwriting. (And here I thought Angels. . . was my first play!) But, lo and behold, at the approximate age of 8, I had written an adaptation of Clarence Day's God and My Father. Now, it must be confessed that I did not have the rights to adapt this material, so I must apologize to whoever the current rightsholders are and assure them that a cease and desist order is not necessary because a) no money changed hands, b) the audience consisted solely of my third grade class (or was it the fifth?) and c) I wouldn't be caught dead trying to remount this production now. (No reflection on the source material, Life with Father by Clarence Day, Jr.--which remains one of the funniest books I've ever read--or my predecessors Lindsay and Crouse who adapted it, before I was born, into a long-running hit which went on to success as both a film and a television series. I guess this proves I had an instinct for good material, even then, if no actual understanding of copyright law.)

Anyway, that's all a long digression to say that I started writing quite a while back, and then I avoided it for a long time. I'm still avoiding it, but for shorter and shorter intervals. And I do love having written.