I trace my desire to write directly to asking bothersome questions in my youth. Long before I actually wrote anything I was edited. I pestered my father with questions constantly. At about 6 years old, he’d had enough and told me to stop saying “why?” I immediately switched to “how come?” In the future, editing would become critical to good writing and back then, it served a timely purpose of allowing me to continue pestering my father.

In the early 80s I was a one-man in-house advertising agency for a family-owned business. I conceived, composed, and manually produced the catalogs, price lists and brochures. Then I manually created each layout page one letter at a time with a then innovative process that took hours. Finally, I burned the plates for a small printing press – I can still smell the ink.

The fundamentals I learned then— copywriting, layout work, and final production, laid the groundwork to write and self-publish.

Learn more about me on my website: ctdbook.com.