​     This business about being a writer before I could even write. It's true. ​I've had this one habit since before I can remember: I'd take cheap, plastic pens apart and play with the top half, run them around in my fingers, twirl them like a baton. As I got older, the pen tops became pencils. As I got even older, I broke the points off the ends of the pencils because I kept impaling myself. My siblings called it twiddling. Why that activity triggered my imagination, and does to this day, (I keep a pointless pencil within touching distance whenever I'm home), I have no idea, but I do remember more than one teacher over the years telling me, "Daniel, I don't know what you're doing back there with that pencil, but I need you to stop it and pay attention." My parents didn't know what in the hell was going on. My dad banned me from twiddling at home, but that just sent me into empty bedrooms and behind locked bathroom doors. 

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