Even though I’ve written several biographies, it’s hard for me to write my own life story. Where do I begin?

My parents were Holocaust survivors who came to Canada after World War II. Because we were very poor, there was no money to buy “extras”. So I grew up in a house without books. But stories? There were lots of stories that I loved to hear, especially about the “old country”.

Eventually I discovered the public library and that opened up a whole new world for me. I read books in the biography section about famous people like Alexander Graham Bell and Florence Nightingale. I also loved the Anne novels by L.M. Montgomery, Nancy Drew mysteries, and even Superman comic books. Although I liked writing at school, I never thought I’d become a writer. I taught English and French at elementary schools for many years. But I still didn’t think of myself as a writer.

When I became an adult, I got married. I have three wonderful daughters and eight sweet grandchildren. When my children were young, I read to them and made up stories. But I still wasn’t a writer. Soon I started going to storytelling evenings and eventually I took a couple of storytelling courses. I began to fall in love with stories all over again.
After I told one particular family story, I wanted to write it down. That story became an important scene in my first novel, Written on the Wind. Now that I’ve been writing for almost twenty years, I can’t imagine my life without writing.