A Writer Prepares

Sometime in 1953, I knew with unusual certainty what I intended to do with my life. I would become a writer.

I was then 15 years old, and the next several years were to prove eventful. I went to college, I got a summer job at a literary agency and dropped out of college to keep it, I sold two dozen short stories and articles to national magazines, and I completed a novel.

By the time I was 25, I had a wife and two daughters and a house in a suburb. I had published over fifty books. Most of ...