My mom says that the first book I ever read was "Jaws" by Peter Benchley. For me, the first book I ever read was a book about Grover from Stresame Street.
My first love was the pulp western novels handed down to me by my grandfather. In fact I think I learned to read from a Louis L'amour book and then later I moved onto Ian Fleming, Mickey Spillane and all the escapist fiction that used to be around. I've always felt the need to write, to create. Indeed I would have started writing in the womb if I'd had a pencil.
I first read the back of milk cartons. But I mostly just looked at the pictures. It made the story easier to understand. Even at such a young age, I got it. The cows like eating daisies, they smile, while blinking their pop art eyelashes. They are happy to have their teats violated for me. I think from here I moved on to picture books, but those memories are all a little hazy. Must have been all the Children's Tylenol I was jacked up on.
I began to write in kindergarten. I had just learned a new skillset: the proper etiquette for eating paste. I was a sick kid (all the paste, of course) and spent about three weeks in hospital, during which I completed my opus. It was magnificent; something about a dinosaur. It glittered. I made a cover out of cardboard, which my mother had to sew together as the doctors had banned all paste.
Comics probably. Then Hockey Pictorials and then Hardy Boys I think. But that's really stretching the memory glands or cells or synapses. I was inspired to write by Dylan and The Beatles and Kerouac and Tom Wolfe (The Electric Cool Aid Acid Test one). Probably the first was some poor girl who didn't want to hurt my feelings and tell me how bad it was.
The first books I remember reading were the classics: Little Women and Gone with the Wind. Ironically, my writing career started after the loss of my vision. I lost my vision nine years ago after a long bout with diabetic retinopathy. Prior to this, I was a legal secretary where I prepared cases for judges in the Family Division. But painting was my passion and I spent all my free time pursuing this passion. Devastated, I enrolled in a program for the blind where I was taught how to use a computer with adaptive software which converts text to synthesized speech. And after a long and winding road, a new dream resurrected. Today, instead of painting my pictures on canvas, I paint my pictures with words. The first people to see my writing was family and friends. But after that, I took creative writing classes and workshops and now belong to several critique groups.
As a child, I read stories by Ernest Hemingway. I was also attracted to sports journalism at a young age by reading newspapers and magazines.
Like most, I began to write term papers in high school and college. Teachers and professors were the first to read my work, and encouraged me to develop more writing skills.
My first professional writing job was as a technical writer for a software company. I developed online help and user manuals.
I wrote my first book before I could read. I folded and stapled scrap papers from my mother's office into a booklet, drew pictures on one side and scribbled on the other. It took me a few more years to learn to read, because I have dyslexia. My grandmother taught me by reading a me a chapter of A Little Princess each night before I went to sleep. I couldn't wait to read to the next chapter, so I began to "cheat" and read ahead. After that, I devoured novels.
My mother taught me to write by editing everything I wrote. When she made a correction to a sentence, she always accompanied the green mark (she wouldn't use a red pen) with a lecture on why it was wrong and what the correct usage was. As I improved, she had to go back to graduate school in linguistics and education to keep up with the sophistication of my errors.
I used to love to go to the library. History books were my favorites, but humor caught my fancy also. I began to write on notes on 3X5 notecards to put into my regular journal at first. I learned that, if I remember correctly, from Jim Bouton and his book, Ball Four. I was 15 at the time. My first works were read by my family and of course at school in English class.
I learned to read when I was in first grade and became better and better each year. Among the first books I read were the the Baltimore Catechism texts we used at St. Leonard's, the Roman Catholic grammar school I attended in Berwyn, Illinois.
Later, in high school and college, I enjoyed reading novels. I liked Ernest Hemingway, who grew up in Oak Park, about three miles due north of our home in Berwyn. In fact, I read some of his novels on summer days while sitting in the Oak Park public library.
In college, I had trouble with grammar. One of my first-year English teachers was a novelist. He said of all his students, I was the only one he thought might become a writer. He urged me to study Strunk's "The Elements of Style" over the summer. I did.
At the end of my junior year, I won a literary award from the English Department for three essays I had written. The prize was a full tuition scholarship for my senior year. Considering I was going to Northwestern, I really appreciated that scholarship. By the way, I was majoring in political science and not in English. I was the first student who wasn't majoring in English to receive that award.   | | |
When I was very little, I used to dictate stories to my mother who would write them out for me. She says sometimes that they were very long!
I have always been a reader, so the first books I remember reading are the little golden books, like "The Pokey Little Puppy" and "The Tawny Scrawny Lion".
I was always well above my peers in reading aptitude, and I read everything all the time during my school years. Now I am a little bit more discerning, only because there are so many other facets to my life these days. I need to make careful choices about what I do with my time.
I began to write when I was 8 or 9 years old. I would write poetry and short stories. Then I would draw pictures to go with the words. My friends and family read my work. Gradually it became more teachers and friends. Now, I have trusted friends really critique stuff, even though I put a great deal online for anyone to read.
I first read children's picture books, such as the Dr. Seuss series. Then my mother enrolled me in every book club possible for children. And I became an avid reader.
I started writing a diary and poetry when I was around ten. Hopefully, no one was able to read what I wrote.
Later I wrote for my high school paper and my peers read what I wrote. Then further in time, after I began reviewing recordings and interviewing musicians, other musicians and journalists read my work. Now, healing professionals, musicians, and those seeking healing through music read my blog.
The dictionary, I could only understand 1% of it. I moved on to the encylopedia, the son of my foster family saw what I was doing and gave me a Little Lulu comic book. It was a godsend for my little brain. I started writing to a penpal, from there I went to writing poems. My foster family were the first ones to read anything I had written.
In my junior days I would walk to the library and sign out mystery novels. Writing came to me naturally. I began to write during a period of mental stress, hypergraphia (an overwhelming urge to write). My eldest daughter and my husband were my first editors.
I read A LOT when I was a child. My sister and I made weekly visits to the library. I remember in junior high school reading Roald Dahl, J.R.R. Tolkien, Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury and whatever else school demanded of us. I began to write at that time. I loved English class and had an amazing English teacher, Mrs. Orth, who was very encouraging. She was probably the first person to read anything I wrote. |
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