Daniel Wallace wasn’t a voracious reader growing up.

“I was an average reader. I was an average writer. Nobody took me aside when I was a kid and said, ‘You’re one of the lucky ones, you’ve got that special spark,’” Wallace said.

But Wallace had that spark after all. Today, he is Carolina’s J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English and the director of the College of Arts and Sciences' creative writing program. He’s also the author of "Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions."

“All I wanted to do is a book,” Wallace said. “Once I got that published, or once I was told, ‘We are going to publish your book,’ I was so happy. I thought, and this is not an exaggeration, ‘I’m going to be happy forever.’”

At Carolina, he shares with his students what being a writer is really like.

“I feel like everything that I’m working on, when I’m working on it, is wonderful. It’s only the next day that I realize that it’s not,” Wallace said. “I have a lot of rejection. In other words, I understand the process.”

On this week’s episode, Wallace shares his writing journey from the beginning — the good, the bad and the creative.