The inspiration comes from a reality TV show on MTV called “Sixteen and Pregnant”.  The girls profiled on this show find themselves thrust from the world of adolescence into the very adult concern of impending motherhood.  But being on the TV show with the cameras following you around, however unobtrusively, must affect reality in some way.  I got to thinking about what way that would be and I couldn’t get a grip on that, but I began thinking about a situation in which a girl, perhaps younger than sixteen, perhaps fourteen, was pregnant and didn’t know what to do about it.

It's always been difficult for me to dissect my own writing -- why I write, how I write, the reason a particular piece comes out the way it does.  I sit down and start writing off the top of my head and what comes out, comes out.  For most of my life it's been stories, but in the last few years I've been writing a lot of what I consider little stories which come out in the form of poems -- at least the lines don't go all the way across the page.  These "poems" still have a lot of a dialogue in them back and forth between the characters. The point being, story or poem, they're composed of three things -- the initial spark or inspiration for the piece, the characters, and the dialogue.  I use a minimum of description and as little exposition as possible.  And how does an old man like me manage to write a conversation between two fourteen-year-old girls, which seems realistic?  I don't know.  Once I write the first draft of something, I rework it over and over again until it seems right in my head.

Do you have a particular writing schedule that you adhere to?

I have no schedule – I write when the muse kicks in, however frequently or infrequently that may be.

What book or books are you reading at this time?

I’m currently reading The Collected Stories of William Trevor – highly recommended.

Give us a few of your greatest influences in writing, if you would?

First, when I was a child, Carl Barks, who wrote/illustrated the Donald Duck stories in the comic book, Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, and most of the stories in the Uncle Scrooge comic book. Known as “the good duck man,” Barks is a master of pithy storytelling, and he rang my bell even as a kid.

Second, Ray Bradbury.  When I was in junior high school I read the story, “All Summer in a Day” in an English class anthology and immediately went to the library to find anything I could by Bradbury.  After reading Bradbury’s stories I decided I wanted to be a writer.

Third, Sherwood Anderson.  I’ve always admired the resolve of Anderson, who in his stories has but one objective – to get at the essence of the story in as simple and direct a way as possible.