When we used to walk to school, I used to read off the walls, graffiti and stuff, everything. I used to write stories, but I'd never finish them. I wrote poems.
I started writing when I was in school. I wrote essays and in my teen years I used to write sorrowful sad stories and poems as you do at the age.
I used to be the hippest of them all. I used to know everything about everything. I used to read about everything that was going on, and I knew everybody's name and anybody in pop culture. Anything that was written about me, I would read.
I used to write in school a lot; I always liked it and used to write on my own, comic books, come up with alternate story lines to the stuff I watched and read, a lot of books and TV, episodes of 'Twilight Zone.' I didn't think about it.
I used to write stories a lot because you had to fill your hours some other way than watching television. So my imagination was vivid, and I used to write a lot of stories. I wrote a novel, which I still have, which is so awful.
My nan used to look after me in the summer holidays and she had a cat with one eye. It used to walk into walls and tables. I used to think it was hilarious. It was a slapstick cat.
We used to dial; now we speed dial. We used to read; now we speed read. We used to walk; now we speed walk. And of course, we used to date, and now we speed date. And even things that are by their very nature slow - we try and speed them up, too.
I used to get in trouble a lot in school because I would write very naughty stories and poems in class.
The teacher always used me as an example to the class of good English and good storytelling because we all had to write the same stories. But she used to make me go out front - which I hated - and read my story to the class and I would get huge applause. Not because of who I was but because they truly enjoyed the stories I wrote.
The books I used to love as a kid, I used to read football books - and by that I mean soccer books - stories about boys in school who started to play football and then became the captain. I'd read them cover to cover. I just got lost in them.
My dad would tell me bedtime stories, and he used to always leave them open-ended and finish at a crucial point with the words, 'dream on'. Then it was my responsibility to finish the story as I was drifting off to sleep. We would call them dreaming stories.
I wrote my first song when I was six or seven, a silly little song. But I used to write poems in high school - not songs.
I used to do poetry and write stories and stuff - I never really had anybody standing over my shoulder, like, "What did you write? Let me hear it." I hate that type of stuff.
My father worked in Chrysler's drafting department and used to bring home tracing paper, No. 2 pencils, and masking tape from the office. With these, I used to trace off drawings from the 'Superman' and 'Batman' comics and put them up on my bedroom walls.
My brother Trev went to the Professional Performing Arts School in New York, and he used to do his monologues and stuff and rehearse in our apartment. So I used to hear him all the time doing these things over and over and over. And when I was a little girl, I used to soak up everything - like anything anyone did, I soaked it up.
My brother used to say that I wrote faster than he could read. He wrote two books - of poems - better than all mine put together.
Sometimes I observe stuff I haven't been through and write about it. I used to walk my dog with these 50-year-olds, and they'd tell me stories I could use.