What did you first read? How did you begin to write? Who were the first to read what you wrote?
Classic Fairy Tales and a book on the aurora borialis. I think Father Christmas was involve in the latter. My great aunt read them with me whenever I stayed with her. I first wrote short compositions in Primary School which would have been read by my teachers and perhaps by my mother. When I was twelve years old I contracted pneumonia and was in bed for about two weeks. I wrote an adventure story modelled on 'Biggles', and a family story modelled on 'Little Women'. My handwriting, and spelling, was so appalling I doubt anyone could have read a word!
This is hard to answer, I have read so much. I graduated Harvard in '68 and did a senior thesis on TS Eliot's critical writings. I love Yeats and other poets, Dostoyevski, Tolstoy, Updike, Ludlum, V.S Naipaul, etc etc...any kind of novel...
I have only written one book, a memior entitled Shiver in the Night, about my life in the world in general, and especially the music and Church world...
My teachers and classmates at the Bennington Writing Program were the first to hear and read this book as it took shape...it is now available at
https://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=36742
I have written many songs which can be found at my various web sites, including
http://www.itsaboutmusic.com/andypratt.html
http://www.myspace.com/andyprattrocks
http://www.myspace.com/andyprattthebook
there are videos of me on youtube and other sites....some of the best are....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZhJpUC1nzI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOtMKhJZEo4
http://superbikemoto.com/vbulletin/vBTube.php?do=view&vidid=UhX9ko2MoQs   | | |
I can't remember the exact book but books were very prominent in my childhood. I have clear memories of mum returning to the car with a new book which my older brother had first read of, then me, then my next brother...you get the picture.
I wrote at school and some of my poetry was published in year books but I didn't begin to write seriously until I was an adult. I did a number of writing classes before Writing For Children. While completing that class, I realised that writing for children was what I wanted to do. I stopped doing classes and began writing and submitting.
My family and my classmates were my first audience.
Everything. Raced through kid's books and then through the classics.
I typed my first 'book' at age 8. (Maybe 10 pages long. I was so excited!) My first reader was my father.
Toby Tyler (mid-30's)
Started writing short stories in high school
Fiction Editors at Seventeen Magazine
Readers of Seventeen Magazine
I started out in this business as a poet.
The first book I clearly recall reading was "Wizard of Oz." I think I was about 6 years old. I began to write when my dad brought home a beat-up old mechanical typewriter, and I took off from there. My friend Janice Virgo was the first to read a book I wrote called "The Wendy House."
The first book I remember reading was Stone Soup. The next was Ben and Me (about a mouse and Ben Franklin).
I wrote my first 'book' when I was twelve years old and I filled a large spiral-bound notebook with the story called Western Flame. Wrote my next one at age 15 and used an entire ream of paper to type it...mistakes and all.
My best friends Marti Conley and Jean Landrum read the book I wrote at fifteen. My first real book was read by my husband, Tom.
I loved those ubiquitous Nancy Drew books, however I found it a little hard to believe that she'd go exploring an attic while wearing a skirt and it irked me that she and Ned Nickerson never did any necking. Perhaps that's what led me to a career as a mystery romance writer.
When I started to create my own stories, my mother was my first audience. Rather than agonize over penmanship and punctuation I would read aloud to her. She's still my biggest fan.
Growing up as a kid I read mostly the 3 investigator books. Also I read many books by Beverly Clearly and Carolyn Haywood. I started off writing poems when I was young and eventually transformed my writing into novels by age 16. The first novel I wrote at 16 just recently got published at the age of 42. My parents were the first to read my books and now in one month of the book being out I have sold over 250 copies as a new author.
I have been writing in some form or another since I was very young I started to write seriously during college and then more afterwards. I have always made my work available for peers to critique.
I taught myself to read when I was about three, with books that were meant for the first classes in elementary school. After that I read about anything, but mostly fairytales and scary stories.
I began to write on my parents' old typewriter. Never finished a story but it was fun anway. There was a definite trend going on in my writings, that's for sure. It was all about tough boys going on adventure.
I think that the first stuff that I really wrote, I sent to a befriended Dutch kids book author. He told me to go on, that I had talent.
I think the first books I remember reading were the Bobbsey Twin books, but as I grew older the first adult style book was a Mills & Boon, can't remember the actual title.
I began to write when I was at primary school. Writing essays were part of the 11 plus exam for entry to grammar school in England. Although there were other parts to the exam, I'm positive it was the essay that got me the pass mark. Carrying on from there I've always dabbled in writing, but began to send my work out to publishers after I took a creative writing class to hone my skills.
My own writing, well the first would have been my creative writing teacher Joan Rosier-Jones, a New Zealand author who not only writes great books, but encourages others to write. Other people who read my first efforts were friends with whom I had formed a creative writing group.
I actually can't remember my first book, I've read literally thousands, but one that really sticks in my mind was 'The name of the rose' by Umberto Eco. It was actually really hard to read and had lots of Latin quotes that I didn't understand but the writing was beautiful.
I began writing as a result of a friendship I struck up with an author whom I did a first publisher edit for. We would share a bottle of vino and I would tell him about my life experiences. He loved the way I described my encounters and thought they were hysterical. He was intrigued by my philosophy regarding sex and the attitude of the men who approached me and encouraged me to write my experiences as stories.
I didn't share my work with anyone for years and then I met a man who had similar attitudes to me and he persuaded me to let him read them. His encouragement led me to write more and send some of them to websites for others to enjoy. The response that I got overwhelmed me and I mentioned this to a colleague who liked my stories so much he paid for me to have my very own website! | | |
I started reading at an early age, but the first book with which I became enamored was Lamont the Lonely Monster by Dean Walley. By the time I was five, I became obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe, and regaled my first-grade classmates by my ability to recite The Raven on command. Aside from a story that I submitted to a writing contest hosted by Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine when I was about ten years old. (I placed first in my age group, and the wretched little piece of fiction was published in issue #153 so as to haunt me for the rest of my days.) Intent on becoming an artist during my youth, I didn't decide to seriously devote time to writing until my senior year in high school, whereupon the bug bit me something fierce. My biggest inspirations at that time were H.P. Lovecraft and Philip José Farmer. |
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