I've always found "how/when did you get your break into writing" to
be a very weird question, at least in my case; like asking a doctor, "when
did you get your break into foot surgery." It wasn't one thing at one
time. This is a career that I've prepared for, and worked toward, and
entered incrementally over a very long period. I always knew that I would
be a writer, used to collect pencils and paperclips and could determine the
better grade of erasers and #10 pencils at an age when most kids were still
trying to figure out which end to hold. It's just a quirk.

When I was 16, after having read comprehensively in every genre I
could get my hands on, I decided that now was a good time to start. So I
began writing. Short stories, poems, playlets, articles, you name it, I
wrote it. I didn't show anyone at first, just kept slamming words
together in the process of learning how to make little explosions of
character and action. When I felt ready -- six months later -- I began
showing it around. The high school I was attending began producing some of
my one-acts, and commissioned a full play from me; I began selling articles
to local newspapers and magazines; even placed a one-act with a local
theater, which decided to produce it before discovering that I was only 17
years old. (When I showed up, they kept waiting for my parents to arrive,
until I pointed out that *I* was the JMS on the script.)

After that, it was just a process of *writing* and *sending it out*.
There is no mystery, no big break, no sudden revelation or secret
handshake. Bit by bit, I sold more articles, sold more plays, sold some
short stories, and bit by bit, almost without noticing, the list of credits
got longer until one day, people started asking me when I knew I'd Made It
as a writer, when it hadn't ever occured to me that I *had* made it as a
writer...I hadn't realized it'd happened.

It's the difference, I suppose, between buying a finished house, and
there it is...and watching the house go up brick by brick over a long
period of time. At what point did it "become" a house?

It's probably not a helpful answer, but it's the only one I have....

jms