Sean Dent

Email: ptny1r1xd001@sneakemail.com

Born in England, I divided my childhood pretty evenly: England, New York, Ireland. My adult life was spent in Ireland, England, Australia, and Canada.

I decided to be a writer when I turned 21. So I became an accountant. But I hated the idea of being an accountant, so a couple of years later I decided to be a writer and started work as a computer programmer.

That was a lot of fun and I could make a lot of money and see a lot of countries.

Then one day I signed up for a drawing class in Sydney, Australia. It was full and I got bumped into the creative writing class. We got a homework assignment and it was to write something from our childhood. The teacher said it should have pain and it should grip the reader and that it need not necessarily be true.

I wrote about the time I got lost at the beach. The terror, the grief, the heartache! I read what I wrote and threw it in the bin. Not enough pain. So I wrote about that time when the manager of the department store caught me turning off the escalator and was going to call the police. And then I threw it away.

I sat there for a few minutes looking at the typewriter and then I typed the sentence, “At the age of five I lost my father and my brother. My brother died of pneumonia and my father died of a broken heart.” By the time I’d finished typing about an hour later, my face was covered with tears.

I went into the classroom and took my place and listened to the stories about the clowns and the ice creams and the first train trips. They were all nice stories and everyone in the class all said, “Nice story”. Then I read mine, which wasn’t really a nice story and no one said anything. In fact, there was silence. Finally the teacher managed to squeeze out an “that was good”, but she looked at a complete loss to say anything else. So I said, “You said it should have pain.” She agreed that it had pain. Someone asked me if my father was still alive.

“Yes,” I assured her. “And so is my brother. It’s entirely fiction.” Then the silence ended and the class broke into laughter. Not that anything funny had happened. I was hearing relief. I realized that with two pages, single-spaced, I had changed the way these people felt. And I knew I had to be a writer.

The writing job they offered me paid about one-third what I was making as a computer programmer. I’ll be honest. I was reluctant. I still sometimes think it was the wrong decision. But I’m a writer. I think my life is richer. I just have less.

Since then I've done freelance stuff, journalism, marketing, PR, a bunch of odd jobs, a stack of short stories and mini-plays, and I wrote my first novel called Camp Arizona. They told me the writing was bad, so I spent a couple of years becoming a better writer. Now I'm re-writing Camp Arizona, re-writing short stories, and editing NFG Magazine. My whole life is suddenly re-writing and editing.

Interests: Baseball, children, sunshine, golf, skiing, and pizza.

Published writer: Yes

Freelance: Yes