Cynthia Lord

After college, I got married and became a teacher. I taught first-grade, sixth-grade, and even in a one-room schoolhouse. In those years, I wrote curriculums for educational publishers. When I had my own children, I returned to the world of Winnie the Pooh and Happy and Peppermint, and all the wonderful new books for children. Some books we loved to the point of the pages falling out. As my children grew, I returned to writing fiction. Now, I get up most mornings between 3:30 and 4:00 AM. I tiptoe through my dark kitchen, flick on the coffeemaker, and sit down at my desk. That's my own time, the just-me time to open my heart and spill it across white pages. Early morning is a beautiful time, still and dark, and I can smell the ocean many mornings when I open the window next to my computer. Often, the sun comes up while I’m writing, and my dog, Flurry, comes in and lies at my feet. The sound of his breathing and my fingers hitting the keys are the only sounds in the room. I’ve come a long way from the girl backspacing over mistakes on the Royal typewriter, reusing the same piece of carbon paper until the letters were ghostly pale. Now I backspace on my computer, and nobody needs to know how many mistakes I make.