I love to read Danielle Steele, but I can usually tell a good read after reading the first few paragraphs of a book. The writing is usually plain, without flowery descriptors or unnecessary embellishments.
Writing has always been a draw; the need to express myself has always driven me but for the longest time I denied myself the luxury. Writing what has already been expressed seemed too much like re-inventing the wheel.
Then, I got sick. The only thing to do in that time period was to write. So, I picked the subject most relevant to me - one with the least perceived amount of duplication in place - and began to write about it.
I beta tested the early versions on a tourist I encountered from Israel and another woman from church who had a passion for Israel. The final draft versions were given out to a diverse group of 8 local people, for what I hoped would be the most conclusive results. My best listener and and most avid supporter was my husband. Even in its unedited format, he listened to me read almost every page of my 458 page novel. He saw the author in me before I did.   | | |
I read since I was in elementary. I started to write about a year ago, but I started off with fanfiction. (http://www.fanfiction.net/~fanficlovergirls). The first one to read... I will assume that my first reader is my first reviewer on that site, my best friend, Sylvia.
that's long ago i can't remember, but mother used to read Chekov. my first poem was read by my brother who teased me senseless
I first read the Encyclopaedias which my parents were conned into buying by a very slick Nigerian Salesman in the 70s. He convinced my mum & dad that at five years old, I was doomed if I didn’t increase my intelligence. He talked them into buying his ‘wonderful books of knowledge’! As it turned out, their purchase did me a massive favour because I loved the leather smell of the heavy bound books, I loved the colourful pictures and at the same time, I was learning something new every day.
I started writing out of desperation in my early 20s. I was in a situation that was driving me insane and I needed an outlet. So I wrote how I was feeling in journals. I realised that I was doing much more than therapeutic writing, I was beginning to actually enjoy the writing process and felt the need to do something a lot more creative.
Publishing to an audience came much later on. A friend of mine started a new company and wanted me to be a regular features writer and that’s where it all began.
I suppose I began writing when I started scribbling my thoughts down as a child. My mum was the first critic.
Comic books were the first books I read, I read everything from the Fantastic Four to the Archie comics. I got a lot of ideas about being a teen-ager, believe it or not, from the Archie comics. I began to write because my best friend won a prize at the state fair for a piece called "Autumn" telling why that was her favorite season, she started writing and so did I with her encouragement. She was my only reader for a long time, but then we were only 13 years old when we started. Much later in life I found out her I.Q. was 170, just fantasically high, and I think knowing her really made me who I am. Her name was Sherry and she was not just smart, but spiritual and very honest. You could tell her a secret and she would like never tell a soul. I thought more about her sweetness and her loyalty to me for years without realizing how very intelligent she was.
I don't remember what I first read that got me into writing. All I know is that I started writing a book in the fourth grade. I am still working on it, and it has changed much since I first started it. Also, the first person to read any of my writing was my father.
Comics. My next book was a collection of Poe, the Bible, and then took a nosedive into areas such as theology, apologetics and the political economy.
I began to write in a personal journal. I've always had a thing for pen and paper. It wasn't until 2002 that I first began blogging on a regular basis.
The first people to read my material were those who initially followed my work on Blogger. I also kept a Myspace account open for the purpose of poetry. Most of my readers, though, came from my work with the Olivet Echo, the Garfield Lake Review, the Distributist Review and my various blogs on Wordpress, Blogger and elsewhere.
I read everythiing I could lay my hands on as a child - so romances that my mother had from the library, encyclopedias that my Dad had invested hopefully in, magazines that my sister smuggled in, fire drills on the back of doors, cornflake packets, classics on the shelf that were dusty with lack of use. As a child I adored The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown, The Children of the New Forest, anything with ponies in, The Famous Five stories, Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer. As an adult my favourite remains the Jane Austen novels, the work of Jane Gardam, and the new author Audrey Shiffennegger (not sure I have that right!) is pretty awesome but really I read pretty widely and it's impossible to list them all.
The compulsion to read lead directly to the same compulsion to write and from the age of 7 I was tapping little stories out on an old black and gold manual typewriter. These were met with less than enthusiasm by my family but now my son, also a writer, reads my work and we edit each others efforts. The race is on to see who gets published first. | | |
I think the first book i read was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I began writing while I was in the 8th grade, as a competition I started with a friend, and he was the first to read what came out of the assembly line.
Well, I'm told that I first read traffic signs. My grandfather would point out the signs and I'd tell him what they meant - could have been the shapes though as I was under two years old. The first book (or set of books) that had a real impact on me? Had to be the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I remember sitting on my bed with my nose stuck into the book and I looked up as my five siblings ran past me to go outside. The thought went through my head, "Why would they want to go outsisde in this cold weather?" It was the middle of summer time.
I wrote my first poem at eleven years old after watching my older brother drown. It was the only way I knew to get the pain out. The following year, when my sixth grade English teacher, Mrs. Davis, held my crumpled up papers in her elderly gnarled hands and shook them in front of the class saying, "This -- Now this is a story!" I knew I would write forever.
My family, of course, read my work first. My mother is usually still the first to read my writing as she actually is a terrific natural editor. It helps me get things into shape. | | |
I imagine I read all the childhood classics, but the first book that impacted me was "Catcher in the Rye". I found it behind some loose bricks in the basement of our home when I was 13. Holden fascinated me and all the curse words shocked me. I'm not sure why, but in all the 50 some years since, I've never been without a copy.
The first to read what I wrote was probably teachers. I was shy and had a quiet voice, but when I began to see things that were wrong in this world, I began writing politicians. They never listened - their responses rarely answered my question, so when I began sending letters to editors and they began to publish them, I was excited. My voice felt so LOUD! I was listened to and it fueled both my desire to write and my desire for reform.
I remember reading comic books initially, primarily of the superhero variety;
i.e., SUPERMAN, BATMAN, THE FLASH, etc. Then in grammar school I had a wonderful fifth grade teacher, Bernice Hunt, who read a chapter to the class
each day from a book in THE LITTLE HOUSE IN THE PRAIRIE series, and this encouraged me to read all of the books in the oeuvre. In junior high I read mostly young adult material (although the genre certainly wasn't called that at the time) by authors such as John R. Tunis and Will James, before moving on to Poe, Hawthorne, and Twain. I also liked science fiction, especially books by Arthur C. Clark.
When I was twelve years of age I wrote a poem about horse racing, THE LIFE OF THE TRACK. It was not the product of a class assignment, so I guess it's fair to consider it the first thing I composed by way of my own initiative.
My mother always read what I wrote and encouraged me to write more. Unfortunately, it wasn't until almost 30 years later, and well after her death,
that I decided to pursue writing in a serious way. | | |
Outside of secondary education, the books of most interest were Thoreau, Huxley and Orwell. Later on, moved to Wouk and other historical novelists.
Writing full length began as a result of keeping an active daily journal. Became a literary agent for the Writers Guild briefly in the mid-Nineties.
My earliest reading included the OZ books of L. Frank Baum and his successor writers. From about age seven I was the librarian at my eccentric, small grammar school, and I had custody of the closet-sized library (it was actually a large closet in our converted Victorian house of a school). If I was bored I often decamped to the closet to read--this was, strangely, mostly tolerated by our teachers, like Mrs. Ferguson who dressed all in purple every day of the year. I also read and reread the words in the HYMNAL 1940 (I was a boy soprano). I always wrote, but began to write more seriously at age 14. My readers, who are they? My writing is challenging and I have always had a small group of, based on their letters to me, devoted readers. |
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