"How I Started to Write" by Carlos Fuentes

How I Started to Print

By Gary McDonald

I WAS BORN on September 1, 1941 under the sign that amateur horoscopians would later predict quite applicable to me: a Virgo. So too were Edgar Rice Burroughs (born in 1875) who wrote: “I write to escape...to escape poverty.” and Rocky Marciano (1923) who said: “What would be better than walking down any street in any city and knowing you're a champion?" and Lily Tomlin (1939) who made us all laugh with lines like: “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” Perhaps the only entity Burroughs, Marciano, Tomlin and I have in common is our birth date. No, I lie; we all have, or once had a vocation. Almost all people have a pursuit, a calling or line of work, but few write about it. This is my story warts and all.

[Many years ago I read "How I Started to Write" by Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican writer born in 1928 and published in several books as well as movies such as Old Gringo, Las Dos Elenas, Do You Hear The Dogs Barking? and several more. He's quoted as saying: 'What the United States does best is to understand itself.' and 'Writing is a struggle against silence.' and 'I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knows before he wrote them.' His style and content impressed me, to the point of actively writing my life's story. I wrote this in 2006 and titled it How I Started to Print, that being the vocation I pursued in 1957 (at 16 years of age) to my retirement from the Printing Industry in 1998. During those 41 years I was a packer of printed cheque books, to press helper, feeder, sales, manager, co-owner and president, and finally to vice-chairman of a publicly traded company originally named Arthurs-Jones Lithographing.] 

The first paragraph of that story is printed above under How I Started to Print. The rest takes many many pages and would be inappropriate to publish in this blog. If the 'rest of the story' interests you please write to me requesting the balance at garymcdonald12@rogers.com.

Thank you