'Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,' the Mock Turtle replied; 'and then the different branches of Arithmetic – Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.' – Alice in Wonderland
My earliest memory of reading was Ferdinand the Bull. I still have my copy of it. Even now, I think the illustrations are amazing. And a little creepy.
My parents got me a typewriter when I was about five. No idea why. It was a small blue one, with ivory-colored keys. I liked the feel of clacking on it. I dropped it accidentally once, and it never worked properly after that.
I was lucky to live in places with really good libraries. Mrs Wachsmith was the elementary school librarian. She was short and had really long straight hair. She was also an amazing story teller. She could do all kinds of different voices, and she'd act out scenes for us. She also had an uncanny knack for recommending good books based on what you liked to read. Because of her, I read Starring Sally J Freedman as Herself, all the Nancy Drew and Ramona Quimby and Fudge books the library had, Little Women, the Wrinkle in Time series, a series about a girl named Anastasia, and another series about a girl named Katie John, who had a dog named Heavenly Spot. And I was the first person in the school to read the library's newly acquired copy of Dear Mr Henshaw.
All of my elementary school teachers read aloud to us on a regular basis. Charlotte's Web. James and the Giant Peach. Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. Wind in the Willows. Bridge to Terabithia. I hope story time is still part of the school curriculum.
Required reading in middle school and high school and college was hit or miss. I liked a few of the assigned books and plays, but not many of them. I definitely liked the classics - Dickens, Austen, Poe, Hemingway, Fitzgerald. And in 8th grade, I had the best introduction to Shakespeare a student could have. We read Romeo and Juliet. The teacher translated the first act for us so we could get used to the language. Then she coached us through the second act. We were on our own after that, but we more or less had the hang of it by then. We got to watch West Side Story, without being told why we were watching it. She let us make the connection that it was a modern version of Romeo and Juliet. We also saw a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is where I realized that plays are often far more understandable when they're seen rather than read.
Other than Catcher in the Rye, I never cared for the coming-of-age novels, a la Homecoming, A Separate Peace, The Chosen. But there was more Shakespeare and Dickens and Austen in high school, with Wilde, the Brontes, Shaw, Miller, Joyce, Warton, Salinger, Vonnegut, Waugh, and Tolstoy added in for variety. I attempted Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn on my own at 16. That was an ordeal. Russian lit is not my thing.
I didn't really take to writing until I was 17. Prior to that, I struggled with the mechanics of writing, although taking French classes helped a lot. Once I understood prepositions and whatnot in French, they made more sense in English. I took Advanced Composition in 11th grade, in place of a traditional English class. Mrs Messer helped us unlearn a lot and re-learn it in a different, better, and more sensible way. I owe my writing career to her.
I started college as an art major, and got interested in photography, which is how I wandered over into journalism, my final major. I memorized the AP Style Book (still my favorite style book) and wrote articles about chili pie fundraisers, poetry slams at the local cafe, AIDS quilts on display, the DAR museum in the basement of the journalism building, and visiting feminist writers, while listening to CNN or C-SPAN on the TV in the student newspaper office. I came to actually enjoy my weekly article critique sessions with Dr Ragland, my advisor. If you can't take critiques of your writing with the good intention in which they are usually given, writing becomes a stagnant drudgery with little improvement and lots of useless indignation. She taught me that critiques, when done right, are not meant to ruin your day. They're meant to make your story better so you can get it published. I also owe my writing career to her.
I had visions of being a photojournalist for National Geographic or Smithsonian Magazine or something like that, but it was not to be. I was constantly told that I had a good eye, but that my photographs weren't all that great. Meanwhile, writing and editing jobs kept landing in my lap. A girl's gotta eat and pay off her student loans after all.
I wrote my first novel after breaking up with a boyfriend. It was a more productive use of my time than eating entire chocolate cakes in one sitting. (You do not want to know how I know this.) I've written four other novels since that first one. They are in various states of revision, but I am slowly working on them to get them finished. That first novel became my MFA thesis, and I'm going to release it as an e-book soon. It's not brilliant, but it's a passable first effort. I think my fiction writing has improved since then.
If you asked me which books influenced me and/or my writing, it would be too long a list, and it changes as I get older and get interested in new things. So don't ask.
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