One of my most vivid memories is being eight years old and following my mother around the house asking what could I do. She would often tell me to write a story.

I wrote a lot of stories as a girl, many of which are sitting in a blue folder. Some have illustrations, others are stories of talking bears, girls kidnapped from in front of their suburban homes, earthquakes and other hazards filling my mind.

I didn’t stop writing. I didn’t stop, that is, until a high school English teacher criticized my writing. And then I did stop. But this craving for writing, this need for writing, this sense of my essential Jody-ness being driven by words on a page had to emerge eventually.

After college, after graduate school, after marriage, after careers one and two, after kids, after dog and birds, after divorce…. then the writing began like the uncorking of a bottle.

And so I write.