Author, A. J. Llewellyn

I am blogging today at Totally Bound’s author blog…http://www.totallyboundpublishing.com/?p=5659

In case you missed it or you wanna stick around here (and why not??!!) here is what I wrote:

By A.J. Llewellyn

Being a writer is a funny thing. I write to live, and I do live to write. I can’t say I have taken my passion for the craft for granted, but it’s second nature to me. It’s what I’ve always done since I was about seven years old. It has been my refuge. My sanctuary. My income. My life.

I’ve come to rely on it in ways I can’t explain to friends who don’t write. As I get older I look back on memorable moments in my life, such as the time I was working nights for Cellar Masters, a now-defunct company that sold wine through TV ads. Gone are the days when booze was promoted on the telly! I was one of many phone operators working with a headset and computer. The hours were dreadful (10pm – 2am) but the pay was great. For a struggling writer it was perfect. I worked in a room with other writers, out of work actors, out of work…everything. But anyway, my brother and his wife had just married and they were saving to buy a house. I recommended the job to them and my supervisor, who enjoyed my serious work ethic was keen to take them on, but there was just one small problem.

Neither of them could type!

I’d been typing since I was seven years old and didn’t think about the fact that some people might not know how to do it. I got my first typewriter at the age of 10 from my dad at Christmas. Before then I typed on his secretary’s massive desktop monster. She taught me how to use it and for me, it was instant and amazing true love. I used to go to my dad’s office after school and wait for him to take me home. My brothers raced around the place playing pirates, but I was busy writing stories. Silly stories, but I wrote them. It was a thrill for me.

Then he got me my own typewriter, a portable Olivetti I still own. It’s traveled the world with me. It became my best friend and I drove my dad nuts with my constant tap-tap-tap-Ping!

That was before he shunted me off to the US to live with relatives. Some parents have kids who drive them crazy with drumming. Other parents back when I was a kid had children who typed. Typewriters were noisy in those days!

But still to this day I miss that lovely Ping! at the end of a sentence…

I came to the US with my grandma a week after Christmas. She transported me from our home in Sydney to live with cousins in Northern California. We made two stops on the way. The first was to Disneyland. I’m not sure who was more excited – me or grandma. She burst into tears at the sight of The Happiest Place on Earth. I burst into tears much later when she wouldn’t let me go on anything more violent than Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

We made another detour to Las Vegas. I had an uncle who lived in Sin City (at a time when locals weren’t allowed to gamble) and he was my grandma’s nephew. We went by bus and I recall being on that damned thing for ever. I think she thought he’d give her piles of coins he won at the tables or something. I have no idea what she thought, but it was a disastrous visit because she’d booked our hotel room via some lunatic travel agent in Sydney and we wound up in a disgusting pit of a place off the strip. She refused to spend another time and relocate us. My uncle sprang for a room for the night at The Sands. To me it was more amazing than Disneyland. It is of course long gone, but back then, The Sands was the hottest hotel and I don’t mean the desert temperatures. It was classy and shiny and sparkly.

And they let me use their typewriter.

Being ten I wasn’t allowed in the casino, so while my grandma played what my dad always called the one-armed bandit (a poker machine), I sat in the booking office of The Sands and typed. For hours. It was the first time in my life that I wasn’t told to stop typing because it was late, or because there was school. Or because I should go outside and play. Or because… Because…because…because.

I typed until I felt like stopping and experienced a wondrous sense of peace afterward. I am embarrassed to reveal I’d spent all my time writing a love letter to the actor Richard Chamberlain (!) who owned my heart in those days, but even then I had a romantic’s heart. I guess I was getting ready to be a romance writer because I could see him in my mind, kissing me, hugging me…

I guess it was a sign of things to come. A writer writes. It’s what I do. And will always do.

Because…because…because.

Aloha oe,

A.J.