I can't remember. I recall hearing A/A. Milne, Kenneth Graham, Lawrence Houseman, the Andrew Lang colored fairy tale books, and then reading myself. One memorable summer when I was thirteen, I hardly slept. I read Gone With the Wind, The Nazarene, War and Peace, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Payul the Apostle, and more. You can tell my aunt belonged to the Book-of-the-Month Club. I read now with the pleasure of not having to finish a book if I don't like it. It took me years after college to realize I could do that.
I started reading at a young age, and my first book was a fairytale collection. I began writing because I longed for stories that equally combined my two favorite genres: fantasy and romance. Like most authors, my first readers were family.
The first author that I read and liked was Dostoevsky. I read 'Crime & Punishment.' It affected me deeply. I did not start writing until 2 years later when I was 17. I'm not sure who has read my work so far.
I have no idea what i read first. That was along time ago as I've been an avid reader all my life.
How i began to write was by picking up a notebook and pen, finally putting on paper one of the stories that had been going through my head for years. The first to read anything i wrote was family and then friends. Gradually I moved into a critique group, a creative writing teacher, and submissions to agents.
I honestly don't recall what I first read. If you mean as far back as picture books, I did enjoy the Berenstain Bear books, amongst others. Comic books (as aforementioned) as well. The Goosebumps series comes to mind, though there were also others such as 'Where the Red Fern Grows,' and 'The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.' I also vaguely recall some obscure young-adult horror novel called 'The Ripper' (by D. E. Athkins), and the ever so disturbing Scary Stories series (those by Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell), which I still feel feature the most horrifying illustrations I've ever seen. I don't know the precise first book. However, I can say for certain the two novels I read which prompted a more serious interest in writing prose as well as scripts; those were 'The Hobbit' by J. R. R. Tolkien, and 'Crime and Punishment' by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
As for who read my own work first, that would certainly have been my family. Though, if you mean outside of that, my friends and a few of my school teachers as well.
How I began, exactly, is a mystery in itself. I know I was always possessed of a great imagination. I was always creating stories in my mind for the toys I played with or the bit of live-play I did, and, here and there, I might commit some adolescent silliness to paper (such as short horror stories, comic scripts, or a 'movie' or 'video game' script or two). For a long time, I wrote and drew a series of comics featuring a character all my own. But, I suppose, it was just something I moved toward, just as anyone does who finds interest in something and decides to pursue it long-term.   | | |
I think the first thing I read was "The Radiant Way" reader used in my pre-school. I remember some story about "Bess is six and goes to school." Yeh, it was a British reader, that was the reader used in pre-schools at the time in Jamaica. I began writing in 3rd grade after skipping 1st and 2nd because my reading was too advanced. And back in those days in Jamaica, man, we started writing compositions from early. very early. I guess my teachers were the first to read what I wrote.
First words that I learned were from cereal boxes and milk cartons on the kitchen table. So I understood some phonetics before entering the formal educational conveyor belt. First book was the Dick and Jane reader, back in first grade, Mrs. Ellis, you could hear a pin drop. First full-length book I read was Kon-Tiki, by Thor Heyerdahl, a report of a raft trip commencing in South America and drifting across the Pacific Ocean. The trip proved that ocean currents and wind could propel a raft huge distances, an appropriate metaphor to say the least. The first things I wrote were four line poems, rhymers, encouraged by my Mother, who is a writer, and who was my first reader.
I used to draw things when I was about 5 or 6 and then wanted to write an explanation of what I'd drawn, such as 'this is a castle with trees around it'.
I first read adventure stories and science fiction books and stories. Also, comic books and Mad magazine, of course! I guess I began to write because I enjoyed creating stories about people and strange situations they might find themselves in. I began writing poetry as journal entries for an English classe at Glenn Academy High School around 1964. I wish I could remember the teacher's name!
The first to read my work were fellow students.
I began to write very early and I created a double sided, one sheet class paper in first grade. My dad xeroxed it off and I sold for two cents to classmates, some of whom also contributed to my paper. My grandmother was my chief critic, editor and fan so maybe that accounts for why, despite a fairly long run as a media writer, there is rarely any negativity in my writing even though I can easily see that 'controversy' sells. I'm simply not a fan of using my talent to badmouth or scare the crap out of people and those genres don't interest me for reading either.
I read a lot of R.L. Stine's work when I was younger, also L.J. Smith. In Junior High, I was also reading Stephen King, which garnered funny looks from my classmates, lol. I recall writing when I was in 3rd grade. It started out as a simple writing assignment using some vocabulary words. It only had to be a paragraph, but my imagination kept going, and it wound up being a whole page, front and back, lol. I guess my mother and teachers were the first to read my stuff, but it wasn't often. I kept a lot of my writing to myself.
My first book was a collection of short stories by Beatrix Potter. That was the starting point for me. I loved her books, still do. And I started writing right after reading them, so around age 5. I've been writing stories (mostly short ones) ever since then and have just now gone public with them. And the first people to read what I wrote would be my parents. I never really realized back then that other people enjoyed reading what I produced. They still do, even if its not exactly to their taste.
La Edad de Oro ("The Golden Age") and the poems of José Martí, Las Mil y Una Noches (Spanish translation of the collection of folk tales and stories from the Middle East and North Africa, "One Thousand and One Nights"); Platero y Yo ("Platero and I" by Juán Ramón Jiménez)...later, when I was about seven or eight, Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island, and some years later, all of the Nancy Drew mistery stories and the Hardy Boys (written by committee : ), and every adventure of Sherlock Holmes. As a teen I read Miguel de Unamuno and Garcia Lorca, and Don Quijote de la Mancha by Cervantes.
I first began to write when I was about ten years old. I wrote stories and poems, and songs. In fact, my first screenplay was originally a song, and then it grew...but songs are just very short stories put to music.
I read so much when I was a young child. It's all a blur now. I know that I was BIG into comic books as well as novels and some pulp fiction.
I began to write in school, crafting stories for assignments where crafting stories was unnecessary. But I do remember I always had a story to tell, especially if I could make one up.
When I was five years old my father taught me to read using the King James Bible.
I'd been working with words through writing newsletter articles, news releases and marketing collateral for years but one day an entire novel occurred to me and I rushed to write it down.
Friends and family were the first to read my fiction. |
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