Owing to his instruction, I was able to excel in producing written reports and went on to attempt talking professors into letting me write a term paper in lieu of final exams — when it worked I made very good grades.

Later, my first professional writing was a pick-up job to clean up a final report of archeology [rejected by the contracting agency for bad writing — thus not paid for]. Dr. Bellow’s instruction came to my aide and, even though I had a broken heart and wept most of the time I was writing the report, it was accepted and cemented my reputation as a writer among my peers. And I learned that I can write regardless of the immediate emotional circumstances. It was a major report of findings at the Texas Historic Fort McKavett and stood as the first comprehensive work for that site – published in 1974.

So I owe my non-fiction publishing career to Dr. Bellow. If I ever publish a novel, I’ll owe that to him too inasmuch as I have learned to create a structural backbone for my stories.

In regard to other writers, I think J.K. Rowling has one of the best stories, if only because of its magnitude. She went from nothing to being one of the most successful writers today, both in terms of fans and money, and she gives a lot back.

As for myself, I don’t know if I have a favorite writing success story…yet. I’m still very much at the beginning of the process, and most of the things that stick in my mind are instances where someone didn’t like or understand some detail of a story and it inspired me to show them up.

Then I watched an item on t.v. about J.K. Rowling visiting schools in Britain and doing question and answer sessions. One of the children asked her if she had any advice for aspiring writers and she said (can´t remember the exact words, but this is what I remember): “Just keep writing until you write something you like. One day you´ll write something and you´ll know you´ve written something worthwhile.”

So I followed her advice and now I am actually writing something I really like. Even better, other people like it as well, including a few professionals.