Mark Worthen

My mother began teaching me to read when I was three. By the time I was four, I could read any comic book you put in front of me. At five, I was reading chapter books, but when I went to school and they gave me the Dick and Jane readers. The teacher wouldn't let me read aloud.

At eight, I was reading H.G. Wells, and Homer in verse by twelve. By the time I was sixteen and had my first kiss (we waited until puberty in those days), I'd read anything and everything I could get my hands on, and had decided I could do better than a good majority of what was out there.

So I started my first novel. It was called City of Death, and was a horrible amalgam of William F. Nolan and Edgar Rice Burroughs. And it was the most abysmal atrocity I've ever perpetrated on this poor planet.

But it was the beginning of a habit that would, on and off, persist until today.

Read a sample of my work: Maslow's Magic 8-Ball

At twenty-one, I'd spent two years in Peru. This was before the Sendero Luminoso -- the Shining Path -- moved out of their stronghold in Ayacucho and parked on the front lawn of the Casa Azul, the president's mansion.

In college, I studied Spanish, linguistics and teaching English as a Second Language, and got varying degrees in all of those things. When I got out of college, I began teaching ESL, a career which eventually led me to Korea, where I spent two more years, and came home when Kim Jong Il seemed to get serious about turning Seoul into a "Lake of Fire." I've since learned he makes that threat at least once every five years or so.

Now? Now I'm in the midwest, working at a university and writing.

Come to my website!"The Minimart, the Ruger and the Girl" and "The Carrion Bird, the Angel of Death, and Me" - Honorable Mentions, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow, 2006

Edited with Thomas Myspace Editor V3.6
Subsequent revisions coded by hand because it's easier that way

Can It Be Learned?

It's a common question out there. "What if I wasn't "born" with the talent? Can I learn to write?

The short answer? Yes.

There are people out there born with an innate talent towards writing. Everything they put on paper seems to be gold, and every word that falls out of their mouth seems to be worth money in someone's book.

But I have always considered writing to be one of those things that anyone can do. It's just that there's many, many levels of writing. If you want to be a writer, you can. Don't say you're going to do it someday. Get going! Write something.

Myspace Codes

But let me caution you: This is not something you want to do just to be a poseur. You can say you're a writer, but that doesn't make you a writer any more than my saying I'm a badger makes me a badger. The mantle of "writer" is not a party costume to put on and take off.

Writing is one of the most difficult, loneliest, most frustrating, most hateful jobs anyone could possibly imagine. It requires discipline, hours of practice, an extremely thick skin, a willingness to let people reject you -- not once, but over and over again.

And that's just the beginning.

I can't speak for everyone, but I certainly think it can be learned. Some folks have more of a gift for it than others, and that will always be so. But it doesn't mean you can't catch up to them.

Below are some websites for both beginners and advanced folks.