From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and (1)______ twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the conscience (2)______ that I was outraging my true nature and that soon or later I should have to (3)______ settle down and write books. I was the child of three, but there was a gap of five years on the either (4)______ side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeing mannerisms (5)______ which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginative (6)______ persons, and I think from the very start my literal ambitions were mixed up (7)______ with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing in unpleasant facts, and I felt that this (8)______ created a sort of private world which I could get my own back for my failure (9)______ in everyday life. Therefore, the volume of serious -- i. e. seriously intended (10)______ — writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of five, my mother taking it down to dictation.