Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog, “My Writerly Life,” which pretty much encapsulates my nearly 84 years. I hope you will read along and perhaps “Follow” my weekly posts, and share your own reading habits and inspirations.

I was not born knowing I was a writer, but I was an inveterate reader from a very young age. Mom had all kinds of books on the shelves—from Madame Bovary by Flaubert to the Zane Grey westerns–and I was allowed to read whatever I liked.

In 9^th grade, I was placed in an advanced English class (responsible for our school paper and taught by retired journalist Goldie Ripper). Together we discovered I had innate talent and enthusiasm for writing, as I finished every assignment and asked for more.

By high school I was editor for that paper, and writing for our local Citizen-Journal, with an eye toward The New York Times. Sadly, that required a degree from a top-tier college beyond my reach, so it was a business degree for me, and climbing the corporate ladder. Still, I wrote–internal docs like strategic plans, articles for a business journal.

Life’s like that, isn’t it? When we can’t reach the ultimate goal, we just bob and weave. Whatever the impediment, I found a way to write. And read, of course—Nabokov’s Pale Fire; Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.

A lot of life rushed by before I returned to college for the degrees I preferred—both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in creative writing and literature. Suddenly I was immersed in Shakespeare, Joyce, Woolf, Tolstoy, and I was writing every day—assignments, blog posts, a family memoir of sorts.

I was also drawn to writing about the West, because, well, I’m a Texan. I read Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, James Galvin, and patterned my Master’s Thesis after my uncle’s quarter horse ranch. Wrangle was eventually published and won a Will Rogers Medallion for western romance.

In more recent years, I have taught composition and literature at a local college, trying to inculcate students to the value of great writing. I have toyed with another novel—based on the west of the 1980s as ranchland had already begun to shrink. Maybe it’s for my modern students who have no concept of western mythology, have never ridden a horse, and do not care to do so.

In this blog, I will write about my western roots, my writing life, my love affair with great literature. I will write about books I discover, introduce you to people I find fascinating, mention cultural and artistic topics that inspire. I do so hope you’ll come along and share your own experiences as a writer or reader or citizen of the world.

Jonnie Martin

FOLLOW: I would love to have you join me again next week. As a convenience, enter your email below and I’ll send each new post to you. It will magically appear in your in-box, to read, ignore, whatever. Next Saturday’s squib will be a review of Sebastian Barry’s Booker-nominated novel, Old God’s Time. I also invite you to scroll down and add your reaction to this week’s post; your experiences, your wisdom.