It wasn't intended, it isn't organic, I do not have writing in my genes. My natural inclinations were for something more social. When I envisioned a future, and I certainly never intended to live this long, I saw myself sitting at a large table with some dozen others—funny people all—each dedicated to taking the current conversational riff and sending it ever outer—like an electron, excited by a laser, hurtling toward a never-before-achieved outer valence... The funny people would come from far and near, attracted by the sound of laughter at the table, and I would dedicate my life to socializing with them.

I never found my table nor the roaming funny people. But one day I overheard in my head some argument, possibly between two dead funny people searching for their circle of hell. It was great to listen to them fight, but hard to keep the argument straight, unless, of course, I wrote it down... so I became a writer, or more exactly a chronicler of conversations overheard in my head. I turned the talking into plays by moving it around and writing ACT ONE at the beginning and THE END at the end.

Playwriting seemed easy, what were all those playwrights complaining about? All a playwright does is write down the conversations of the dead funny people talking in her head. Until the day I woke up to a loud silence. My table was empty, my dead guests had moved on—probably to trick another hapless living person into becoming a playwright.

When the dead guests move on, a playwright can: quit, wait for them to return, or try to go it alone. I couldn't quit—(sloppy sentimentalisms deleted); I waited for a while, and when they didn't come back, I went solo.

Going solo is like building a house with no materials: find mud and straw, make brick, carry brick to foundation, put brick in place. But then—"Oh no! Brick wrong color, brick break, brick no fit." Take a breath, go back, find mud and straw, build brick, etc. This must be what the real writers meant when they said "writing plays is hard;" they were talking about the endless brick-making.

But if I can build enough of a house, crooked as it might be, the souls of dead funny people will come and grace this house with their presence, long enough for me to write down their conversation, capture their characters, create a reason for people who aren't me to go inside this rickety dwelling in order to hear the voices of the dead funny people. But if I haven't made the effort, if I haven't put up some partial shelter, there's no place for the souls of the funny to light. So I keep struggling to give the funny souls a place to dwell.

I do this because I have long ago lost the ability to socialize with the living. This may be an indication that I myself have become a real writer.