When I was little the first books that captured my interest where the Throughbred horse series. However lately what has renewed my interests in books is the Dark Series by Christine Feehan and the Lover series by J.R. Ward.
I was always writitng stories, while in classes in Highschool, between classes, and carried that on through College/University. My friends were always the first to read them. One book I started as a complete joke as I was bored and had nothing to do at work, got to love summer jobs, and my pen pal was the first to read it actually and they told me to get it published.
I remember reading a lot of Enid Blyton books as a kid - under the covers by torchlight, whilst munching raw carrots. My first 'book's were pictures I drew on pages with words that I dictated to my Mom to copy out for me before I could even write! My parents read all my early stories, until I went professional and then my friends preferred to read my work.
Dr Seuss books - I remember sitting on the floor in our house, reading 'Hop on Pop'. My writing is actually only half of my work - the other half is drawing and painting. As a kid, I drew pictures all the time.
I started to write during my third year of a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art (Painting). I wrote longhand in journals, and in a classroom full of typewriters where they taught secretarial students how to type.
The first people to read my writing were my teachers and friends at art school. I painted the stories alongside pictures.
Jane Austen, Gabrielle Roy, Smurf Tales in French. Even when I was younger, my preference was to write though over reading. I posted my writing on a "live space" website and was given a great deal of, thankfully, positive feedback. I then gave a copy of some of my writing to my partner at the time who handed one of the stories around a cruise like a flyer, and again, received very positive feedback.
Enid Blyton's Famous Five and CS Lewis' Narnia Chronicles: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe remains my all-time favourite book.
I started writing at primary school and won an award for a short story at the age of 9. I really didn't pick it up again until I was in my twenties and then more seriously in the early 1990s. I undertook some creative writing classes and just began writing short stories.
My family and my tutor!
I started reading before I went to school. Right from as far back as I can remember, I have loved reading, prefering reading over television. I devoured all sorts of books, read the news papers, and what ever else I could get my hands on. I have always loved to read a variety, never settling only on one genre and style.
I usually have 4 - 6 different books that I am reading at any one time.
Writing was a progressive, natural and logical path.
With a love of reading, the arts, playing and writing music, and graphics creative work, writhing and being creative are so natural to me. I also teach and run various courses with paganism, withcraft, tarot and associated areas. This, and public speaking also have built up my confidence. There are so many things to write about, and books that I would like to accomplish. Again, not in one genre, but in various different areas. Some are work books, some are creative books, some are coffee table books, some are fiction books, some are poetry, some are dealing with specialised areas. I first started writing poetry. This was shared with friends. I like to buy blank cards and put my own verses on them. It was only a matter of time before I started to write a book. With so many ideas running around in my mind, my friends would encourage me to start writing, so others could share and appreciate what I had to offer.
My friends are always the first to read what I write. They are both encouraging, and constructively critical at the same time. I find my friends are also great sounding boards as well. And I still value their opinion highly.   | | |
I read Enid Blyton's children's books and when I was nine years old, I read the 'Noddy' books aloud to my 2 year old brother. When I was 14 years old, I began my first novel as a chapter-a-week book to read aloud to a girls Sunday School class - the girls were nine years old. They loved the suppliment adventure story and my class increased 3 x.
I remember reading Ladybird books, and various picturebooks, and Ruth Park's Muddleheaded Wombat series, but I think the first book that really impressed me was The Cats of Honeytown. I used to borrow it from the library, but then it got passed on to another branch. One day we had a new librarian and she said she needed to know the author before she could initiate an inter-library loan! That was when I first realised it was important to know who wrote a book. (I discovered, many, many years later, that it was by Margaret J. Baker.)
As I got older, I read and loved Monica Edwards' Romney Marsh series, CS Lewis' Narnia series, books by Geoffrey Trease and books by Ethel Turner, Mary Grant Bruce, Mavis Thorpe Clark, Nan Chauncy and Eleanor Spence. I read my mother's old LM Montgomery, Susan Coolidge and Louisa Alcott books as well, and books by Gerald Durrell and Robert Heinlein. All this set the stage for my lifelong preferred genres. I wanted to write like Monica Edwards and CS Lewis (and like my sister, Anne Farrell, whose uara series was also a favourite).
Moving on, I read KM Peyton and Antonia Forest, and, in my teens, encountered my all-time favourite authors, Diana Wynne Jones and Elizabeth Marie Pope. Oh, how I wanted to write like them!
I began writing as soon as I knew how to form words with a pencil. My family and my school teachers were my first audience. My Year Four teacher, Lucy Ting, encouraged me and entered a story of mine in a competition. I won. Later on, local authors named Nairda Lyne and Sally Packet encouraged me, and I sent stories to the NSW School magazine. Some were published, and some of those were also included in my first published book in 1977. | | |
Always read a lot as a child, from quite early. A lot of science fiction in high school, a lot of 19th century novels in university. From high school on, wrote many stories, plays, poems, songs, essays, and stylistic experiments.
My father read to me from a very young age, and it wasn't simply "Run, Spot, Run". My earliest literary memory is my dad reading "The Hobbit" to me and seeing if I could figure out any of Golem's or Bilbo's riddles. It was when he was reading "The Lord of the Rings" and we got to the scene where you believe Gandolf has been killed that I realized how powerful and moving a book can be. I went into mourning for weeks, but came out of it with an understanding of death that aided me in real life situations. Books and stories are incredible ways to experience worlds you can never physically visit but are still connected to the one you live in
I began to write short stories by the age of 8, some for school, but mostly for myself and my friends. I'd put my friends into known worlds, like Star Trek or Care Bears, and then write about their adventures. We'd sit on the playground and I'd read my works out to them. They were a highly receptive audience, though very capable of constructive criticism if they felt their character wasn't being given their due! | | |
I think the first book I ever read was "Snugglepot & Cuddlepie" by May Gibbs. From there I continued to read about other australian fiction, including "The Magic Pudding" by Norman Lindsay. The books that I read stimulated my imagination and I continued to read every book that we had in our School Library. I was always asking the Librarian "when were we getting new books issued?" Another big influence on me was A.B."Banjo" Patterson, and his poems "The Man From Snowy River", "Clancy of the Overflow", "The Man from Ironbark", and many more. I started to write poems in Primary School as soon as I could, some of my stories & poems went into Competitions at the local town show & I won a few First Prizes. My writing of Stories & Poems continued on into High School. My Parents were the first to read my Poems & Stories. When I went to College(High School), I started to write poetry initially for the fun of it & to get my feelings out on paper, as it seemed to become more real, in a way. My friends were the ones reading my Poetry then & they liked them so much that I had requests from my friends, for me to write them poems. I started to seriously write stories in my Senior year, which was read by my English Teacher who gave a lot of advice & encouragement. I read "Lord Of The Rings" & "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien and went on to read the Dragonlance Series written by Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman. I read other series written by these fantastic authors & was inspired by the way that they write & stimulate the imagination. I have been writing on & off over the years, I was writing a lot after High School, then I moved away & have only just recently moved back into town where I have found my inspiration again. | | |
First thing I read was David Eddings Series The balgariad. I was house sitingat a friends place and watchingg the early morning light dance and play on the pool water while sitting in the lounge, I sat at the computer and started to punch our what I was seeing. Couple of friends were the first to read my writings...
As a child, I was very much into Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Secret Seven books, Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, the C.S. Lewis books about Narnia and novelisations of Doctor Who. Then I tended to look for more humour as I got older with The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole or something with a science-fiction theme.
I always wrote in class, whatever assignment the teacher set us, and just continued to write things after leaving school. In fact, it was writing joke articles about my friends that led me to becoming a journalist.
Aside from school teachers, it was usually friends I was living with at the time. I used them as sounding boards, getting the "general punter" point of view, as they read my work.
I seek Uttuku -- soon it will be found. Robert N Stephenson has seen the darkness, and it is his light I will find.
Every book in the primary school library, the first book I remember reading was Childhoods End by Arthur C Clark, I was around eight or nine, although a few general encyclopedias childrens type come to mind as well. I wrote a series of poems, and then discovered that they had a sort of theme running through them and that the order they were written in made a bizzare kind of sense. But I destroyed it.....only to write it word for word a second time......then destroyed it a second time about five years after the first time.....only to re write it yet again word for word....this time kept for real...at last report it is somewhere in NSW Australia.....family were the first to read what I wrote but it has since expanded. |
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