THE MOMENT YOU KNEW
By Kathleen Bolton | October 27, 2008 |
A few weeks ago I blogged about whether readers are born or made. I also wonder if writers are also born or made.
I’ve spoken to so many writers who say as soon as they could read, they’ve never known a time when they didn’t want to write stories (except Therese!) They were making stories up in their heads or rewriting episodes of Gilligan’s Island or forcing their friends to listen to their stories. It was a feeling in their gut that writing was what they were born to do.
I remember the moment I wanted to be a writer so clearly. I’d just finished reading Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Man, I hated that scheming Nellie Olsen! I got to thinking what it was in the story that gave me that sort of response. I mean, I never felt that way about Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Or The Wicked Witch of the West. Or even the Gollum of The Hobbit. Nellie sparked something particular in me. How, I wondered, did Laura Ingalls Wilder do that? Because I wanted to do that too.
My mom came in with some clean laundry. I sat up in bed and told her I want to be a writer. “Yeah, ok, put these socks away.”
I’d said it. I was going to be it. A writer.
As the saying goes, easier said than done. Still, I’d known from an early age that I wanted to be a writer. And the inspiration was Laura Ingalls Wilder.
We all know there’s a lot more to writing than wanting it. It takes a lot of bloody hard work and rejection and paying attention to the craft. Those who write because they have to are the ones who stick to it through the gory learning curve. Publication may never come, but that doesn’t stop them from creating. Is that a innate characteristic, or is it learned? I’m not sure.
Were you born to be a writer or did that desire com e to you later in life? What inspired you?
Image by Tammara.
Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She writes under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ani Bolton.
She has written two novels as Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter–both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President’s teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins, and Tamara Blake, for the novel Slumber.
i wanted to be a writer when i was in middle school, but my writing skills were quite raw. and i didn’t know how to receive critique from my teachers. it rocked my world when teachers would red line my papers because i exceeded the margins on the paper. i wasn’t getting the feedback on the content, i believed. i got lost in the world of georgette hyer when i was a teenager, and wanted to write exciting romances like she did. but what i got my most positive feedback from were the letters i wrote. my parents always enjoyed them and both of them strongly encouraged me to be a writer. even my aunt, someone a bit high in the instep, would tell me how much she enjoyed my thank-you notes. but it wasn’t until i met someone at work who was writing a book that i saw myself writing a book too.
I’d always loved reading, but in 4th grade our gifted class had to write and illustrate a book. I fell in love with the craft at that point, and haven’t stopped writing since.
I don’t remember a moment when I thought I had to be a writer, but as far back as I can recall I felt the need to create and have a venue for self-expression. In grade school, I made up plays and cast my school mates in them. In Jr high, high school and in my early college years, it was all about music–singing, writing songs–and theatre. Through some loopy twists, I moved away from creating for a while, but I found my way back to it as a freelance writer. Once I was submerged in the world of reading children’s books to my daughter, those old desires to create for fun stirred, and there I was–writing.
I devoured stories from an early age–comic books, novels, short stories–and early on evolved into a storyteller My first stories were told with cartoons. As an adult, I produced a comic strip that sold to a minuscule number of newspapers; I retired it when I calculated that I was spending about $3 per hour to do it.
I transition from comic strips to writing via advertising. The link isn’t really that tenuous–writing commercials calls for both strong visual and verbal talents, just as comic strips do.
Then came screenwriting, including animation scripts. The same talents for visuals and words were required for both.
Then, finally, I faced down the gargantuan challenged of writing a novel (by understanding that I only had to do it one page at a time). I became hooked, and have written 5 novels to date and edited many more.
I never decided to become a writer–I loved to do decided for me.
For what it’s worth.
Summer between 3rd and 5th grades (yes I skipped, yes I was one of THOSE kids) in a Study Skills class at summer school. We had to write an essay on the most beautiful place we had ever seen. I wrote about New Park in Taipei, Taiwan. I got an A+. That was it.
Just two nights ago I came home for my mom’s birthday, and I found that old New Park essay on a shelf in my room. Not very good, haha, but it’s still it.
Oh, I loved the Little House books! For a child growing up in New Zealand the settings seemed altogether exotic, but the characters were utterly real.
I was lucky enough to be in a very small class in primary school, with a group of clever students who were encouraged by our teachers to explore all kinds of projects on our own. We wrote extended stories in cut-down exercise books, with illustrations, and passed them around amongst the group for what amounted to critique (A, B, C etc.) That probably got me started – there’s nothing like positive peer feedback!
Love the illustration to this post, Kathleen.
Incidentally, the latest issue of Good Reading magazine here in Australia features the following:
(1) A featured excerpt from Barbara O’Neal’s book The Lost Recipe for Happiness
(2) A Christmas buying guide showing my new book, Heir to Sevenwaters, and Time of my Life by Allison Winn Scotch side by side!
Go Writer Unboxed!
Oooh, Juliet, how lovely!
I remember the year I became a writer–5th grade. My friend Cynthia suddenly declared to me on the way home form school that she liked the boy I’d had a crush on all year, and to get back at her, I annouced I was going to be a writer (what difference would boys make to a woman of such independent character?). As she was so impressed, I went home and started a novel.
From that day to this, there has not been a time I haven’t had a novel in progress.
Incidentally, the latest issue of Good Reading magazine here in Australia features the following:
(1) A featured excerpt from Barbara O’Neal’s book The Lost Recipe for Happiness
(2) A Christmas buying guide showing my new book, Heir to Sevenwaters, and Time of my Life by Allison Winn Scotch side by side!
Go Writer Unboxed!
How fabulous! Thanks for sharing this, Juliet!
Barbara, what a great story!
Thanks, Juliet, great news indeed! Is there a scan you could share? I’d love to post those images, along with Ray’s comic strip.
Kristan, I forgot to add how terrible all my early writings were: derivative, overly histrionic, just plain awful rip offs of Tolkien or C.S. Lewis or Bronte. I never attempted an American frontier saga, though. That was sacred ground as far as I was concerned.
Thea, Miranda and Therese, I never had any encouragement in middle school, but I do remember a classmate who won a writing contest and I was soooo jealous! That kept the flame flickering as well.
Your mom sounds like mine. I knew by the time I entered kindergarten that I wanted to be a writer and nothing else. Not that I was any *good*, of course. I just continued to be worse at everything else. :P