MY LITERARY BIOGRAPHY

As I entered the Public Library in Lima, Peru, I was but a kid of thirteen years of age. I couldn’t help but feel a wave of excitement wash over my entire mind and body. I knew the potential that surrounded me, and I wanted to take it all in. Never in my life had I seen so many books!

As I curiously gazed around, I noticed an abandoned book sitting on a table, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Even though I hadn’t heard of the book before, I opened it anyway. I took in the words almost as if I was under a spell, captivated by the characters and their stories. I read it from start to finish. When I was done, I knew I wanted to be a writer.

From that day on, I imitated Mark Twain; I wrote whenever and wherever I could. I wrote on the bus, in my room, and even at my high school (militarized Colegio Guadalupe), where writers and poets were unwelcome. Nothing could stop me; I was determined to become the next Mark Twain.

A few years later, as an adolescent, I experience my first encounter with philosophy. A friend lent me the novel Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, who was much in vogue in those years. Fresh in my mind is still the memory of that afternoon of my youth when I read the novel from beginning to end on a bench in La Recoleta square in Lima, Perú.

I thought then, “What a fantastic novel! I will have to buy my copy because I must study this book. I must study philosophy.” Although the years have inexorably passed, never have I ceased to read philosophy.

Later, as a student at Columbia University, and as I immersed myself in the American culture, I heard a country-western song by Skeeter Davis, “The End of the World,” whose lyrics caught my attention with its unanswerable questions:

Why does the sun go on shining?

Why does the sea rush to shore?

Why do the birds go on singing?

Why do the stars glow above? —

I cannot understand

Why everything is the way it is

How life goes on the way it does

Why does my heart go on beating?

Why do these eyes of mine cry?

I recall the song urged me to understand nature, life, the human heart, and the human organs, and how everything is the way it is. So, while I searched for answers in religion, I came to realize that the more apt answers perhaps were in the thoughts of poets, novelists, and philosophers and writers.

These articles are the product of that life-time search. With modesty, I can say my junior years were, and even now my late years are, but an endless quest for knowledge.

So, when at 16, I came to study at Columbia University; I kept writing, taking on all the never-ending challenges that came with it. I wrote stories, poems, and countless other things, always striving to make my work better. I kept pushing and eventually I published my first book. Now I have 124 books translated, edited, and many of my imagination. And all this in my gained language that is English.

One doesn’t have to be a brilliant writer like Mark Twain or as deep as Jean Paul Sartre, or any philosopher.

Just becoming a writer is a source of great joy and happiness.

This story is proof of the magic I found in the Public Library in Lima, Peru that prodigious day of my junior years. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer did more than just give me the courage to become a writer; it gave me the courage to pursue my dreams and keep going even when the journey seemed impossible.

God knows I have tried, but I am now living proof that we can achieve even the impossible with enough dedication and hard work.

Find three of my books below:

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My articles are first written by Writesonic (AI) and then I edit them. Of all the AI software out there, Writesonic is the best and most economic.

https://writesonic.com?via=marciano89