I didn’t plan on being a writer.

Sure, I liked writing as a kid, and I even edited and published my own newspaper, the Weekly Worm, from the third through the eighth grade. But it wasn’t the writing part of my newspaper I liked; it was the fact that it was a creative project that I could do with my buddies, Tom Baer (my co-editor) and Tim Cathersal (my cartoonist and illustrator).

Back in grade school, Tom and Tim and I were always working on some extremely cool project. Along with our weekly newspaper, we made movies, posters, audio-tapes, our annual haunted house in my garage, and lots of great (and very elaborate) prank phone calls to our grade school nuns and to the kids who picked on us in class.

With Tom and Tim, I learned just how much fun it is to create--how satisfying it is to make something from nothing and to get swept up in the sheer joy of invention. Creating something you care about can be hard work, but because you care so much about it, it doesn’t feel like work. I have never felt more alive than on the warm summer nights I spent sleeping over at Tim or Tom’s house, plotting our latest project. Or waking up on a Saturday morning, knowing I had a full day to spend with my friends--with at least two full days before I had to drag myself back to the dreariness of school again.

In fact, my childhood was so great that I literally didn’t want to grow up. I looked at the adults around me, at how dull and unimaginative their lives were, and I wanted nothing to do with them. Shopping and fashion and cars and team sports bored the hell out of me (still do). Unlike most twelve year-olds, I didn’t want to go to high school, or go to dances, or learn to drive. I knew how good I had it, and I just wanted to go on spending time with my buddies, working on my projects, telling my stories and getting lost in my latest fantasy.

But of course, I did grow up, and I headed off to high school. It was even worse than I‘d expected. I wasn’t popular, which didn‘t really bug me since I‘ve never liked being the center of attention. But while all of my friends, including Tom and Tim, were discovering girls, I was discovering I was gay. I went to Catholic schools, which made things much worse--a fact that I‘m still pretty bitter about. I think it’s absolutely criminal that gay kids are still forced to spend their adolescent years feeling as lonely, and as freakish, as I felt then. That’s the reason I wrote Geography Club , which is about gay teenagers looking for a little damn respect. For more about my life as a gay person, see the being gay section of my web-site.

College was slightly better, but only because I made some more good friends, including Laura South-Oryshchyn (Laura was the inspiration for the character of Min in Geography Club). Laura always made me feel so special--that my ideas were interesting, and that my stories were worth telling.

When I graduated from college, my mom really wanted me to go to law school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I wanted to do something creative. I wanted to spend my life doing the kinds of things that Tom and Tim and I had done as kids.

Every single adult in my life told me I was nuts--that I wasn’t being practical. That life wasn’t fun and games, not when you were an adult. But I was determined. I didn’t care about money or prestige. I just wanted to be able to do the things that made me happy.

I tried acting, but I was too shy to be any good (plus, I kept forgetting my lines). Filmmaking seemed too technical. And I didn’t have the talent to be a fine artist.

So I decided to write. I saved up $2000 from my summer job as a lifeguard, and I lived on that for the next nine months while I wrote my first novel (I’m still proud that I could live on so little for so long!). Reading that novel now, I can see that it’s pretty bad, but then, of course, I thought it was great. I sent it out to some agents, and somehow I even managed to con one into representing me. I was certain I would be a published writer in a matter of weeks.

Weeks went by, but the book didn’t sell.

Months went by, but the book still didn’t sell.

Before I knew it, a year had gone by, and the novel still hadn’t sold. So I wrote another novel. And another one after that. When they didn’t sell either, my first agent dropped me. (I don’t blame her--I would have dropped me too.)

I got another agent, wrote another novel, and that didn’t sell either. Then that agent dropped me too.

I decided that since the publishing world couldn’t recognize my genius, I’d have to branch out into plays and screenplays. Over the next few years, I wrote dozens of them. Most of my plays were produced at least once, usually to standing ovations and glowing reviews. A couple of the screenplays were optioned and almost purchased, and I won a lot of writing awards.

My Big Break "almost" came about twenty times (literally). But in the end, something always seemed to muck it up. So I supported myself by taking a lot of freelance writing projects and working at various non-writing jobs (including working as a counselor in a group home for seriously troubled teenagers. My experiences there were the inspiration for my novel, The Last Chance Texaco ).

All in all, it was pretty bleak. Sure, writing is its own reward, just like making movies and doing prank phone calls with Tom and Tim had been their own reward. But I needed to eat. I wasn’t writing as a hobby--I was writing as a career . I was typing my fingers to the bone, but barely breaking even. I grew increasingly desperate. Writing wasn’t about the joy of creation anymore, and it certainly wasn’t making me happy. Now it was just a drag. Had all the adults in my life been right to try to discourage me from doing anything creative?

I was on the verge of going absolutely bonkers. Then I met another aspiring writer, Michael Jensen , and we fell in love. Almost as important, he had a day-job, which made it so I could eat regular meals again.

Trying to make it as a writer was still frustrating, but at least it wasn’t quite as lonely. I won’t bore you with the next eight years, which really, really sucked, at least professionally. But in 2000, I met an up-and-coming agent named Jennifer DeChiara . Jennifer literally promised me she would get me published (most agents never make promises like this!). Boy, did she deliver. Soon the book contracts were rolling in, one after the other. Now I just write--she does almost everything else. She calls me her "First-Born Son" (because mine was the first book she ever sold), and I call her "Mom." It’s an amazing relationship that I treasure.

These days, my life is darn near perfect. Tim and Tom and Laura are still among my best friends, as are their spouses. I read constantly--hundreds of books a year, and several newspapers a day. And when I’m not reading, I go to movies and plays, and play computer games. Michael and I also travel a lot.

Best of all, I get to create. I initiate most of my projects myself, so I usually write only what I want. And when I work on a project, I get the same thrill, and the same deep satisfaction, that I got as a child. But unlike when I was a kid, I no longer have to stop what I’m doing to go to school. These days, the weekend never ends, and the summer vacation is never over.

The other day, I was drinking a cup of tea and feeling particularly content with my life.

Michael, who was sitting nearby, noticed the look on my face. "What is it?" he asked me.

I couldn’t keep from grinning. "It’s just that now I finally know what it feels like to have your dreams come true."