Tom Swift Jr.

A couple of friends tagged me with a Facebook meme where you're supposed to list 15 fictional characters who will always be with you.

Well, as one friend wrote, "15 is a lot". But one character who affected me deeply, perhaps the first chronologically, was Tom Swift Jr., boy genius-inventor. 

This was when I was in elementary school, when I wanted to be an inventor, before I became deeply intrigued by creative writing.

Sometimes people ask me how I can enjoy computer programming. Wouldn't I rather be writing poems full time, they wonder. But, to me, writing programs feels like inventing things. So, in its way, it feels like the fulfillment of a childhood dream.

I suppose writing poems also feels like inventing things.

There's more than one dimension
to the world of invention.