I have the best readers in the world. Not only did commenter jv alert me to the fact that we had Simone’s crib put together incorrectly (Scott’s fault! Blame Scott!), but your requests are making this whole NaBloPoMo thing much less painful than expected.
Today I am honoring two related topic suggestions, the first from Melissa:
“I’d love to hear about how you got started writing & what your writing background is.”
I started by lying. It was easier than writing when I was very young, because I had a hard time mastering the lowercase letter “e.” Instead I would make up stories, some outrageous (like my many tales of Phooeyland, where the inhabitants were half-building/half-fish), and some…no, they were all outrageous. I convinced other children that I was adopted, that a certain type of seed found on the playground was in fact a Unicorn Egg; I told wild, fantastical lies to anyone who would listen. As you may recall, I once pretended to be a triplet—and acted all three parts.
In kindergarten, I read my first chapter book, The One and Only Bunbun.
I don’t think it is exaggerating to say that The One and Only Bunbun changed my life suddenly and dramatically. You can only get so immersed in a picture book, you see, but a chapter book is different. The One and Only Bunbun was SIXTY-FOUR PAGES long. I fell into that book, and when I emerged, all I wanted was more. I don’t remember exactly when I decided I wanted to write books myself, but it was a natural consequence of my newly unshakeable belief that books were the best things in the whole wide world, and while I flirted with other career aspirations (teacher, actress, spy), writer is the one that endured.
In second grade I began what I referred to as a “semi-autobiographical novel,” having just learned the intoxicating term “semi-autobiographical,” and I called it The Story of Hannah. Later efforts included the treacley period piece An Orphaned Princess (fifth grade) and several other thankfully unnamed tales, all featuring plucky, defiant heroines with flashing eyes. In sixth grade, a story I wrote was published in the newspaper as part of a writing contest. It was then made into a play by the local Children’s Museum, and I received actual, honest-to-goodness fan mail: a card with a kitten on it from someone with spidery, old lady handwriting. The day I was called to the principal’s office to take a call alerting me to my win ranks with my wedding and Simone’s birth as one of the happiest of my life. Incidentally, that sixth grade story was also my first experience with a deadline. I had planned to enter the contest, forgotten about it, and then sat down to whip something up the night it was due, racing to have it postmarked in time. Sadly, it is only recently that my time-management skills have improved at all from those I had at eleven.
By high school it had started to dawn on me that one needn’t choose between being funny or conversational and being a Real Writer, and I ditched the third person for the first and wrote half of a novel in the form of diary entries. By the time I left to study writing in college I had abandoned fiction altogether for essays, and then the years rolled by and voila! Here I am.
Which brings me to another topic request from Laura:
“The mysterious project you are working upon; see references to deadlines in your twitter. I suspect publisher-mandated blog silence on that one, though.”
Actually, the deadlines I mention are not for any mysterious project, but rather my assortment of freelance jobs. I do some online writing for a university, and I have been lucky enough to get a few magazine assignments, one of which I am absolutely apoplectic with excitement about, and will gleefully direct you to once it is available on newsstands (*genuflects madly*).
Of course I do HAVE a project, the book I am writing, though the only mysterious thing about it is whether I will ever find the time to finish it off. But I assure you that there is no “publisher mandated blog silence” on the subject, at least not yet. (PUBLISHERS! FEEL FREE TO MANDATE MY BLOG SILENCE!)
So far no one has seen it but Simone, and she can’t read—thank god, because the last thing I need is to have some BABY pointing out the structural weaknesses of my manuscript. I have been toying with the idea of writing a proposal to send to agents, mostly because if I sold the book I would then have a deadline, and I find deadlines are the only way anything gets done around here. Unfortunately I don’t know (a) how to write a proposal or (b) any agents. But I’m not about to let a little thing like incompetence stand in my way, don’t you worry.
Now, indulge my curiosity: do you remember the first real, with-chapters-and-everything BOOK you read?
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I don’t remember the first one I read alone, but I remember my 3rd grade teacher reading us Island of the Blue Dolphins.
The Black Stallion full into my horsey stage and then, A Wrinkle in Time was a big favorite. Glad to see ya got an earlier appoint for Simone
Hard to say which chapter book was the first, but I vividly remember reading an abridged version of a Sherlock Holmes story in the first grade. “The Speckled Band,” and there were a few creepy pictures too! This kicked off an obsession with mystery and ghost stories that consumed me through childhood, and alongside all the usual Charlotte’s Web and Little House, I devoured Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Judy Bolton, Green Knowe, Agathie Christie, Sherlock Holmes, virtually anything in that section of our grade school library and then some. And now I’m rereading them as an adult!
BUT, I am really just commenting to second your love for Honeycup Mustard!! Good on anything…..drool.
My “gateway” book was “James and the Giant Peach.” After reading it, I systematically read all of the juvenile literature from A to Z at our small public library. And yes, I seriously started at A and read through to Z. My favorites were the “Nurse Nancy” series which I haven’t thought of until just this moment and the “Little House” series.
And you should write a proposal! So we can all read your book!
P.S. So if your cat looks like Anderson Cooper, does your cat also look like Gloria Vanderbilt? (Isn’t that Mr. Cooper’s mommy?)
ohh thanks for sharing your story about how you became a writter! so interesting!
I have no idea what the first chapter book I read was. I think it was Ducky, something about a little duck living in a incubator that was then loved as a pet or something. I ordered off one of those book order pamphlet things and when I got it was shocked at the largeness of it! But not wanting to waste money, read it and enjoyed it!
James and the Giant Peach was the first book I remember getting absorbed into. I still remember all the descriptions of the peach; the actual plot fades into memory. I must have read James around 7 or 8 years old.
Finn Family Moomintroll (in English) aged about 4 according to my dad. I just unpacked it out of a box and put it on a shelf yesterday.
I am 70 yrs old so my memory is stretched a bit thin. My Mom worked nites at the phone co. so she would read to me every nite so I would go to sleep. By the time I was 4 I was reading to her, she said I memorized words at sight.
I always got books for presents (still do), and give them. I read all of the 5 little Peppers, Bobbsey Twins, Little Women, and thousands of others.
Can’t remember first book, but I do remember the name of the librarian at the kids section of our library, Fern Finfrock…
No joke.
Passed on my love of reading, have one daughter with PHD teaching Lit, and Great Grands that under age of 4 all love books..
Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary.
My second grade teacher, Ms. Chase, helped me pick it out and it was my first library book. I was hooked, hooked, hooked from then on. Thanks, Ms. Chase!!!
well, the first chapter book that i remember reading and going, “holy crap! reading/writing is awesome!” was The Phantom Tollboth by Norton Juster.
I’m sure there were chapter books before it, but my most memorable childhood book was, “Where the Red Fern Grows.” I read it at least a dozen times and balled my eyes out every time for Old Dan and Little Ann… I devoured books as a child and read for hours and hours each day… I was often so engaged that I would forget to turn-on the lights as the sun went down. I’m convinced that this practice of reading in the dark lead to the eventual complete deterioration of my eyesight by the age of 17 (since both my parents and brother have excellent eyesight). If not for contacts, the world around me would look like a Monet as viewed from two inches away… I’ve always loved fantasy novels and am (still) a total Tolkien geek – I read “The Hobbit” when I was 10. Other childhood books of note –“Are You There God? Its Me Margaret” – A touching story of a girl and her period…. And everything written by Roald Dahl. I also was very proud to have read “Atlas Shrugged,” when I was 14 because my uncle said it changed his life… Though as mature as I thought I was, I found the story to be incredibly boring and the message was completely lost… I happened to read it again as an adult and found it even less intriguing, though for very different reasons…
If I squnch my eyes closed and concentrate intently, a memory of reading “The Mouse and the Motorcycle” floats up, followed closely by the memory of reading “The Trumpet of the Swan”. Whew! I have so little brain cells left. Truthfully speaking, those books really cemented within me a love for books of all kinds.
I think my first was “The Boxcar Children” but I don’t know how old I was. Another one that sticks out in my mind was “Into the Dream,” but that was sometime in the 3rd grade. It began a very long streak of reading supernatural stories that lasted throughout junior high.
I read Black Beauty in first grade. It was also the first book that made me cry.
my first book that I kept going back to was The Magic Roundabout, an omnibus edition that I would get out from the library again and again and again. I brought it on holidays to France, and quoted the absolutely dahling rather fruity cow, Ermintrude, at length. She called everyone “dear heart”. I want to find it again! That version, though, covered in library plastic wrap cover, with a little stick on label on the inside with the date of return stamps. I was six then. My oldest girl is six now, and is reading Pippi Longstocking at the moment. I think she would like Dougal and the Magic Roundabout too.
Betsy’s Little Star – one of the Beverly Cleary books when I was 9 or 10. Couldn’t put it down. Loved it. Started writing short stories myself about then – but then I never had the talent that you do. :) I’ve had some fun over the years planning and beginning novels/series and even a half done pilot for a TV series.
You can find listings for book agents online. And also sites on how to write a book proposal. I hope you do, because I’d love to read a novel you wrote.
I don’t remember the first with-chapters book that I read, but I do remember the first time I stunned all the adults around me with my reading choices. (This is not meant to be bragging, truly.)
I was in one of the upstairs bedrooms in my grandfather’s house and I espied with mine own little eye a big book. It looked interesting. I wanted to read it. So I did.
It was “Gone With the Wind” and I was in third grade.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. One of my favorites still to this day, and I’m almost 40.
Mine was also “Ramona, Age 8″ in 3rd grade, I believe (how appropriate). Needless to say, I became a HUGE Beverly Cleary (and Judy Blume) fan.
On the Banks of Plum Creek, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Because my mother convinced me that Little House on the Prarie (the first in the series) was the best book _ever_…and then we couldn’t find it at the library. So I settled for the second, then proceeded to tear through the series.
I was…four or five, I think. My parents had never been around small children before having me, and so assumed this was the usual way of things. (Something I bet Simone does as well, given her literarily-inclined parents! …not sure that’s a word…hm)
I don’t remember which one but it was a Nancy Drew novel. I remember falling head over heels in LOVE with reading and from then on it was a flashlight under the covers at every opportunity. I even got in trouble for reading too much in school! Who yells at a kid for reading TOO MUCH?!
The first book I remember at all was called Maid Maleen, I guess it was a children’s version of the Grimm’s fairy tale. I was four, and this book alone I deem responsible for my subsequent obsession with princesses, towers, and the romance of thwarted love and unjust suffering. The first book I read was a primer my mom made for me: “The fat cat sat on a mat.” The first chapter book I read (with chapters and everything) was Little House in the Big Woods.
I always thought I’d grow up to be a writer, although I suspect the first thing I’ll publish will be academic and read by all of four people.
Thanks for opening a forum for nostalgia here :-)
I’ve been reading since forever but that’s not very interesting. What fascinates me is my teenage son and his dismissive attitude towards literature. To Kill a Mockingbird: “Mm, it was okay. What’s for dinner?” (Thank god I had the forebearance not to name him Scout.) Go Tell it on the Mountain: “I had to say it was a good book in the review I wrote for my teacher, otherwise he would have flunked me. But really, it was bo-ring.” Every fall his new teachers look at me smugly when I tell them he’s not a reader, and they all insist they’ll make a reader out of him. By February? Lots of shrugging. Meanwhile he’s mad about acting and can grasp a character and memorize / perform a script like nobody’s business.
The spawn, they never cease to amaze me….
Socks, by Beverly Cleary. I remember when we graduated from picture books to chapter books at my elementary school library. I remember it took me FOREVER to choose one, because I didn’t WANT to check out a chapter book. Don’t get me wrong, I loved to read, but by the time I was forced to move on to chapter books, every picture book in the place was like an old friend to me…
I don’t remember if it was the first, but I was crazy about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
I’m not positive it was my first, *first* chapter book, but I vividly remember going to the bookstore when I was in first grade and picking out 101 Dalmatians. It had a yellow cover. I read that book so many times, that by fifth grade the cover had fallen off. Black Beauty was my second, and it was another favorite. I still, at the age of 29, cry when Ginger dies.
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