DINTY MOORE: As a kid, I liked writing almost from when I first learned in first or second grade how to make words with a pencil. I came from a working-class family. My dad was a car mechanic. So I didn't know anybody who wrote books. I didn't know anybody-- I barely knew anybody who read books.
So I kind of gravitated towards what working class kids did, which was journalism-- worked for my high school newspaper, work for my college newspaper, went into working for my hometown newspaper. So that was a kind of writing that I did, because I didn't think I had other options. I was 30 years old when it kind of hit me that what I really wanted to do was what they call creative writing or literary writing-- writing where you don't just report the facts, but you express your own self and your own view of the world. So that, I either figured it out in second grade or I figured it out when I was 30, depending on-- they're both kind of true in their own way.