Bina Shah is the author of Animal Medicine and Where They Dream In Blue

People always ask me if, as a writer, I loved writing as a child. The answer may surprise you: I hated writing and always thought I was no good at it.
      I remember being in sixth grade and watching with a ten year old's burning jealousy as my classmates always got better grades in their writing assignments than I did. Omair always got a 9 out of 10 because he used six adjectives in front of every noun, producing such sentences as: "The happy, healthy, short, brown-haired, eight year old boy stepped into the warm, shinning, cozy, nicely-decorated room and looked at the majestic, wonderful, rough, green, stormy, sea through the clean, bright, sparkling glass window."
      Aki, a Japanese girl, also got high grades because she had handwriting that looked as through a master calligrapher had composed her essays. She also handed in her pieces accompanied by beautifully drawn illustrations that she coloured in with pastel crayons. I had to be content with only 6 or 7 out of 10 for my pain, adjective- and illustration less stories; in my world, that was a disaster.
      Ask me if I loved reading as a child, though and the answer is a resounding "yes". I grew up on books as I grew up on air, food, and water. My earliest memories are of being read to as a child, and being naturally very shy, books were my constant companions. Next>