From 2004:
I’ve been deeply immersed in the world of words my whole life long. I started playing with my mother’s portable typewriter as a child. I really did read the dictionary for pleasure. I launched my first periodical, a mimeographed newspaper, in junior high school, and God only knows how many millions of words I’ve published since then. Yet I’ve never been one for wordplay, perhaps because I’m no good at it. Be it Scrabble, Boggle, or Wheel of Fortune, I invariably come up short, a deficiency that never fails to surprise friends who take it for granted that I excel at such games….
Read the whole thing here.