As I prepare to graduate college, I’m tasked with a final challenge. (And I’m not talking about staying motivated during the last few weeks of my college career. That’s a different story.) No, I have to present a capstone project, part of which involves writing a ‘critical introduction’ that lists all the authors and books that have influenced my writing career.
My critical introduction reads more like a memoir than an academic paper. And since I realized that I don’t think I’ve ever shared the story of how I got started writing on my blog, I figured–today’s the day.
It all started when I was three. My mom used to sit me down in a big red armchair and read Little House in the Big Woods to me. Now, Laura Ingalls Wilder is a fantastic author. Her books are amazing, and they shaped not only my love of reading, but also a good portion of my personality. There’s a good chance that I wouldn’t be the yarn-crafting, plant-growing person I am today if it weren’t for her.
I learned how to read independently when I was three and a half or so. It wasn’t long before I dove into the rest of the Little House series, which I finished around the age of seven. Then, I moved onto the Anne of Green Gables books, Narnia, The Boxcar Children, the Geronimo Stilton mysteries, and whatever else my local library had to offer. (Oh, and the Childcraft books. My grandparents had those, and I read all of them by the time we moved to Texas.)
The fact that I was homeschooled meant that I had all the time in the world to read. By the time I was ten, I’d read all the decent books at my local library, so I decided to write my own book. I had the characters already. I’d always had a very active imagination, and I had a whole cast of imaginary friends and a whole storyline surrounding them. So I started writing. And I kept writing. By the time I was twelve, I’d written a book and a half, totaling 170,000 words. (For reference, that’s longer than Where the Clouds Catch Fire and Where I Stand combined.)
Then, when I was thirteen years old, I watched a music video that would change my life.
It was Lindsey Stirling and Peter Hollens’ cover of the Skyrim theme. I watched it in my grandparents’ kitchen and was enthralled. Immediately, God started downloading ideas into me. Within ten minutes, I had the building blocks of plot, setting, and character that would eventually–after months of daydreaming and a failed attempt at a comic book–become Where the Clouds Catch Fire.
My story looks so different from many other authors’ stories. Laura Ingalls Wilder, for instance, started writing newspaper articles in her adult years and didn’t publish her first book until she was sixty. C.S. Lewis always had an active imagination, but if I remember Surprised by Joy correctly, he didn’t start writing seriously until he was a college professor. Well–it takes all kinds to make a world. After I get Where Arrows Fall published, I’ll likely downgrade my writing from a career to a hobby simply because I have bills to pay. But I wonder if, in 40 years, I’ll be able to look back at my life and see the place writing has held.
How did you get to where you are in life? Let me know in the comments below! God bless you, dear readers, and don’t forget to review us on Amazon!