On The Moment Atwood Became A Writer, from Negotiating With the Dead: a Writer on Writing

On The Moment Atwood Became A Writer, from Negotiating With the Dead: a Writer on Writing

“Nobody talked about writing as a process or a profession – something real people actually did. Given such conditions, how is it that I became a writer? … It simply happened, suddenly, in 1956, while I was crossing the football field on the way home from school. I wrote a poem in my head and then I wrote it down, and after that writing was the only thing I wanted to do. I didn’t know that this poem of mine wasn’t at all good, and if I had known, I probably wouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t the result but the experience that had hooked me: it was the electricity. My transition from not being a writer to being one was instantaneous, like the change from docile bank clerk to fanged monster in ‘B’ movies.”