Michael Bracken’s “Big Guns”
Unlike most writers I know, many of whom turned to writing well into their adulthood, I was quite young when I became a writer. As an eighth-grader I wrote a short story, showed it to my mother, and told her what I wanted to do with my life. Soon after that, she bought me a typewriter. My first published piece—a poem in my junior high school literary magazine when I was in ninth grade—was followed by contributions to my high…