The book/author that "started it all"?

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KTC

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This is a fav. topic here in the cooler. Comes up in various forms every once in a while. That's a good thing, since so many people visit.

The writer who started it all: ROALD DAHL. He gave me my ability to jump off the reality cliff. I wanted to give that back to somebody else. I knew when I was just old enough to read that I wanted to be a writer.

The books that started it all: The Chrysalids/Any Dahl Book/A Separate Peace
 

veinglory

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Mercedes Lackey, Magic's Pawn I was about 13. It wasn't because it was the best book or she was the best writer in the world. It was just that it was the kind of book I wanted to write (gay romance + high fantasy) and there is was in my corner store in small town New Zealand. It showed me I wasn't a freak for wanting to read that sort of story, that women out there wrote it and big publishers published it.
 

ChaosTitan

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"The Borrowers" by Mary Norton. I didn't start writing down the stories until several years later, but after reading that book (maybe 5th grade) for the first time, I became obsessed with the idea of tiny people living around us. I drew maps of their homes, gave the families names, and made up stories about them in my head.

It was two years before I actually put pen to paper, but "The Borrowers" lit those first sparks.
 

Soccer Mom

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I discovered Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden when I was about eight or nine and fell in love with mystery/suspense.
 

Southern_girl29

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Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was in the second grade. I wanted to make people feel like she made me feel when I read that book. Also, the Betsy-Tacy and Tib books at around the same time. I lived in the library during the summers at that time.
 

Bubastes

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People here have already hit two of my three favorites that "started it all":

1. Little House in the Big Woods (actually, the entire Little House series, especially the food descriptions. Little House ignited my love for food writing)

2. Charlotte's Web

3. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
 

aadams73

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Soccer Mom said:
I discovered Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden when I was about eight or nine and fell in love with mystery/suspense.

Ditto. I was a huge Trixie Belden junkie, and wished I could have written some of them.
 

wordmonkey

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To Kill A Mockingbird

Class Reading in 10th grade and to that point I wasn't really a major reader (and thus not a writer either). We started it and it was OK but nothing that lit my fire. But this thing drew me in, demanded to be read. Insisted that I care about this precocious kid, her brother and the weird kid next-door. Half the book left and I consumed it. I was moved by the compassion of Atticus, stunned by the court verdict and when the news came in from the prison I felt like I had been physically hit in the gut.

And even then I didn't get it.

It took me a second reading to understand it. To learn about themes. To get that the story you tell is not always the story you write.

In some ways, it breaks my heart that Harper Lee wrote just one book. But man, what a book!
 

spike

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The Honey Bunch series by Helen Louise Thorndyke (or whoever was writing as Thorndyke)

I read them in 2nd grade and knew I needed to write.
 
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icerose

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I don't have a particular story that kicked me off into the writing world. Before I could read and write my imagination created various stories, my mother read to me every night and I learned through her to love the written word. When I could read on my own I read as much as I could. In second grade I read over a thousand books for a book worm club. In third grade I read Trumpet of the Swan as my first novel length book and loved it. After reading that one I couldn't read smaller and simpler books as much, I wanted those fuller stories. I started reading Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, reading all but one in both of the original series and most in the newer ones. That's a lot of books! Then I delved into Anne McCaffery. I fell in love with dragons at that point with her Pern Series.

Then we read A Wrinkle in Time in fourth grade, the imagery in that book is a beauty in and of itself. After that I started ready Michael Critchon, John Grisham, and Mary Higgens Clark. And it spread out from there, I read widely, touching upon most genres and found I loved them all. I had been writing poetry and short stories, having one published when I was ten, as well as three composition books compliments of teachers. I started my first novel when I was twelve. I look back and it was a sad attempt, but it wasn't all horrible. I jotted down about 7 story ideas between that and seventeen when I finally got serious. I completed the first draft when I was seventeen, took the first sixty pages and made a 400 page novel out of it, which died a sad death through PA. As well as my second book completed when I was 21.

So one book didn't really do it for me. I have always been a writer and a story teller. It's part of who I am, always has been and always will be.
 

Soccer Mom

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aadams73 said:
Ditto. I was a huge Trixie Belden junkie, and wished I could have written some of them.

I think those books are the reason I'm writing Middle Grade mysteries today. Did you read the Meg Ashley books too?
 

janetbellinger

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Don't know what book made me want to be a writer, but the first book I ever read, at about age 8 was called the Golden Pine Cone and was a children's fantasy novel and I lived and breathed it for at least a year as I reread it over and over again.
 

Live2Write

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I have to agree with the "overactive imagination" part of it as well. I was always creating entire "universes" in my head as a child. I could have probably written at a lot younger or an age and produced some good stories for possible publication but I never had the discipline. Now, at the ripe old age of 27 *snicker* I think I can finally get my butt in gear and do this thing!
 

triceretops

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When I read Poul Anderson's Virgin Planet for the first time, I was hooked like a fat carp on a worm. SF here I come. I wrote my butt off for two years and sold enough short stories in the big slicks to gain entry into the SFWA. Naturally I got all the addresses of the top gun SF and Fantasy writers. I wrote to Poul Anderson to thank him for inspiring me. From then on we exchanged letters for two years and he became my mentor. what a thrill it was!

Tri
 

jbal

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Hmmm. I remember writing stories when I was in kindergarten. I even remember what some were about, though it's too embarassing to admit here.
This probably sounds like strange inspiration, but as a teenager I read Golding's Darkness Visible and Clive Barker's the Damnation Game about the same time, and really loved both. About that same time I was reading a bunch of other books and found myself saying "Why didn't it go like...". After enough of that it's time to stop criticizing other books (even if just in my mind), and see if I could do better myself.
 

Scarlett_156

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No one book or writer inspired me to write; as stated in the post above this one by jbal, it's something I have done since I was quite small, that is, make up stories and draw or write them out, whether anyone noticed or approved or not. When I was four I had a library card. I liked books about science, and to relax I would read the "Curious George" books that my aunt bought for me. Different things inspire me to write at different times-- mostly it's visual cue type stuff. When I'm trying to write something out, I usually avoid reading because I don't want to subconsciously crib.
 

Puma

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Bit of an oddball here - my first fascination with stories (with no pictures) came from the Augustus series written by LeGrand probably in the 40's. My parents and older siblings read them to me before I could read myself, but let me tell you, wanting to be able to read as much of Augustus as I wanted in one sitting was a tremendous catalyst to get me to read quick. My fascination with mountain lions (and my name here, Puma) go back to Ol' Pi-sin, a mountain lion in one of the Augustus stories. Loved them! Puma
 

jbal

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As a matter of fact, this thread made me remember something. As a very young child, I had a bunch of stories I had written, and my dad (always pushing me toward entrepreneurship), had me go out and sell them door to door. I cleared them all out (the only existing copies). I must have been about six at this time, certainly no older than eight. I guess times have changed in twenty years or so. I would never send my son out at that age by himself, going door to door.
 

Provrb1810meggy

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I too have an overactive imagination, and I believe that's how I got started writing. Still, when I'm particularlly bored, I walk around outside and make up a story. If it's decent enough, it may make it to paper. When I try to sleep, I think of stories, or most often myself in the future doing different things.
 
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