I loved Judy Blume's "Blubber" and Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree."
As a kid, I made these ridiculous 80's books in spiral notepads. Girls named Samantha would scream, "Like, gag me!" and the school was named "Sweet Street High." It was all fluorescent markers and glitter.
I had the audacity to give these books as gifts! But I got my payback in the age of Facebook. Friends posted photos of their old water-damaged books. Holy legwarmers.
One afternoon when I was four years old, my father told me he was too busy to read a book to me. I was so mad about it that I stomped off to my room and decided that I would learn how to read it myself. I was never going to need him to read to me again! With the help of the book "Are You My Mother?", I taught myself to read that afternoon.
Three years later, I wrote my first story, and three years after that I wrote my first poem. I was terribly shy about my writing, so aside from assignments read by teachers throughout my school years, very few people ever read what I wrote. It was only in my late twenties that I began to share my work online.
Among the first books I read were adventure novels by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and the rags to riches stories of Charles Dickens. As I got older, I moved onto writers of the American west, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Carson McCuellers, and Cormac McCarthy.
I began writing in 3rd grade. I rewrote the Robin Hood myth. My 7th grade teacher, I would say, was the first one to read me, and understand what I was writing. Later, it would be my Creative Writing professors at UT.
I remember reading all the Louisa May Alcott books I could find as a child, and I can’t remember a time when I did not scribble. My father liked to write poems for our birthdays, and as soon as I noticed the pattern, I followed suit. I’d write poems for family occasions and little pieces to amuse my father. My love of words can be traced to him, I think. At the table, he would recite Chaucer, Coleridge and Robert Burns, complete with brogue. He had a great library, and I had the full run of it.
My absolute favorite book in the world is "Dick and Jane". I was in the first grade and my mother at the time wasnt able to read, so she had me do it for her and my sisters everyday.
This sad fact turned out to be the biggest blessing in my life overall. I read to them each day as a gift, while they were giving me a lifelong love of words.
Writing my first poem in the fifth grade, was for me, something like the scene when Charlie Brown wrote letters and the 'grief' he felt. But, when I turned my poem in, my classmates loved it while my teacher whispered "dont try to make a career of it, your not that good". Unfortunately, I listened but it didnt deter me from reading, until now I am in love with writing.
My youngest daughter was the first to read my work in 2000, when she was in junior high school. She had a project writing poetry and the poem we crafted, her class raved about it. Her teacher hung it up on their class wall and the look in her eyes, showed me that she was proud to have me as her mother.   | | |
I first read anything I could get my hands on, back in elementary and middle school. I was the eldest of three, and the troublemaker, so I was usually punished which afforded me plenty of time to read. Writing came soon after that. I recall my first short story in fifth grade. My mother read it. I still struggle to this day to get my friends and family to read what I write.
Reading has always been a part of my life. Writing was always an interest, and I always received a lot of positive feedback on my early work, but I wanted to be a visual artist until I was 11. I started my first novel at 9; a lot of kids in my class were writing Indiana Jones fanfic (not that "fanfic" was a recognized genre at the time) and I began my own story, not about Indiana Jones, but about a young married couple who were anthropologists.
At 11, I started to write a screenplay about orphan adventurers. At 12, I knew I would be a writer. That year I started to write a novel that I actually completed when I was 29, which is now under consideration at a publishing house in New York.
I read everything I could get my hands on. I remember reading Nancy Drew until my eyes hurt. I remember winning an award in 7th Grade for most books checked out at our school library. I remember picking up and reading my mother's novels when she left the room. I couldn't get enough. Still can't.
I began writing in a journal when I was a young girl. Even then it was fiction. My mother read my diary - how did she ever pick that expensive click-button lock? - and I was in trouble for all the kissing and hand-holding I wrote about. The only trouble was, I invented it all. But what mother believes her daughter is experimenting with fiction in her 11 year old journal?
My first book was The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss. I don't know why though, as I've never been overly fond of feet, perhaps because of this very book and too much exposure to podiatrics in rhyme, now that I think about it.
I started writing pedantic short stories in my early teen years. Looking back on them now is a terrible and enlightening education on what not to do. Once I discovered my capacity for a good, honest tirade, I started writing essays and my situation has improved.
My first readers were my older sister and my mother, but not as the result of solicitation. My sister found my big Folder-O-Stories and started reading them to my mother. I walked in around the time she got to my infamous matricide tale...
I picked up my first romance novel in sixth grade. By the end of the book, I was hooked. I've been an avid romance reader ever since. My idea of the perfect rainy day is a stack of books to read, curled up in my bed, and no one to bother me.
I began to write several years ago. I had these stories in my head that just needed to be put down on paper. And paper it was. In the beginning, I hand wrote everything. I've moved into the technilogical age now and type everything but I still keep a pad of paper on my nightstand just in case.
The first people to read what I wrote? My friends. Then an author friend of my (I'm a huge fan of her work), suggested I submit my work. I thought she was nuts. Who would want to read the crazy stuff that comes out of my head. But, I decided to try anyway. It's been a rollercoaster ride ever since.
Every other Friday, my father would take the family to the public library, where we would scramble to fill our bags with as many books as was allowed. I don't remember what my first books were, but I remember when my father took me aside one evening and said I was no longer allowed to take books from the kids' section. The next trip, he showed me the books "without pictures", which I balked at until I began reading Hardy Boys and Choose Your Own Adventure. I became enamored. I read whatever I could get my hands on, whether I fully understood it or not. I remember trying to comprehend Catcher In the Rye when I was ten; and feeling completely oblivious.
Writing started at an early age for me; I began by embellishing classroom journal entries in grade two, telling tall tales of playing hockey with Wayne Gretzky over summer holidays, or stopping a rogue invasion of aliens that came from the potato fields next to our house. In high school I wrote short stories, plays for Sunday School Christmas events, poems for the girls I was in love with, song lyrics, you name it. Aristotelian catharsis.
The first person to seriously read what I wrote was an English teacher named Mrs. Russell, who immediately began to cultivate in me, not just the desire, but the necessary tools for writing. To this day, I think of her as the real catalyst, the one person who made sure I knew writing was a viable, worthwhile pursuit. In a rural, blue-collar town where the arts were barely mentioned, let alone encouraged, she was a tireless champion of all things literary. | | |
Perhaps around 5 or 6. My father got me several children's books. I don't remember how I began to write. Perhaps, in a classroom. My mother and teacher was the first to read everything I wrote.
I first became interested in reincarnation when I read the book "Audrey Rose" by Frank DeFelitta. It wasn't until some fifthteen years later that I even tried to write a book. I started out writing poetry at a young age and lyrics; that's where I truly received the calling to write from, the greats like Poe.
J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, Lewis Carroll, Jack Kerouac
I started writing in grade school.
I started reading the classics: Huckleberry Finn, Fahrenheit 451, A Tale of Two Cities, etc. English class was never boring for me, on the contrary, I would do reading assignments for extra credit. I believe the first time I wrote anything was in 8th grade. It was a couple of poems for the magazine my drama class made. I remember getting a lot of compliments and my drama teacher was quite impressed. It was then that I started pursuing writing. |
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