One day, I think I was about 8 or 9, I announced during a family dinner that I wanted to be a writer. Members of my loving, sensitive family laughed, patted me on the head and said something to the effect of "Isn't that cute? Children are so stupid."
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What? Stupid? You think Ernest Hemingway's family laughed at him? No, Hemingway was crazy. He'd have probably shot them or something.
By the time I was 10 I had read a lot of Tarzan and Conan novels, watched a lot of Star Trek, stayed up late on Saturday nights watching Planet of the Apes movies on TV and I got the writing bug even stronger. Heck, I figured, somebody got paid to make all that junk up. I want to do that, too.
So throughout elementary school and high school I wrote and wrote and wrote, and all of it was horrible. Nobody, it seemed, was willing to tell me what I was doing wrong, or even what I was doing right. Then I went to college and took amphetamines.
OK, so that wasn't where this story was supposed to go. What I meant to say was that an English professor told me my writing was childish, inane and I'd never make a living out of it. Like many people who get around to succeeding in life - I'll let you know if that ever happens to me - I needed someone to tell me something I believed in was complete crap just so I could work my butt off to prove him wrong ... the jerk.
So, here I am. I've been a journalist since 1987. I'm now teaching journalism at Northwest Missouri State University. Prior to that, I was managing editor for the Kansas City entertainment magazine The X (www.thex.info) and a
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I've been named humor writer of the year by the Missouri Press Association, humor writer of the month by the Erma Bombeck Workshop of the University of Dayton, Ohio, and my family thinks I'm kind of neat, too.
In my career I've been a newspaper editor, general assignment reporter, photographer, newspaper consultant, bartender, farm hand and the mayor of a small Midwestern town. Out of all these jobs, other than writing, being a farm hand has done the most to shape my life. I learned what real work was like, I learned to appreciate those who do it on purpose, I learned that working outside in the heat, cold, wind and rain is good for you, and I learned that, basically, I don't like to smell like pig shit all the time.
I've been published in Missouri Life Magazine, Night Terrors Magazine, Kansas City Family Magazine, The Kansas City Star, Next Phase Magazine, Parentguide News, and Dragon Magazine. One of my stories is under contract with Chicken Soup for the Women's Soul at Midlife ... don't ask me how that one happened.
I'm married to my harshest critic Kim Offutt and we live in Orrick, Mo. I have three children - Tawney, 16, Hayden, 9, and Sam, who's not old enough to have a year attached to him. Tawney likes sports and '70s rock. Sam likes to eat, sleep and poop. Hayden likes to pretend he's a super hero. And, frankly, so do I.
