Beginnings
One of the questions that I get asked a lot is “Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?” The short answer that I give is “yes.” By the age of eleven or twelve, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would, without hesitation, say “a writer.” Before that age, I might have answered “writer,” but I also might have answered any number of other things, include marine biologist (this was before I realized that you probably need to like biology to be a marine biologist, and not just want to swim with dolphins). The turning point for me was reading, in quick succession, a run of books that made me look at the world, and at myself, differently. These included Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness books, Monica Furlong’s Juniper and Wise Child, Diane Duane’s Young Wizards books, Alexander Lloyd’s Westmark and Prydain books, and Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series. Aside from being just uber-awesome, these books helped me through a really rough patch of my childhood, and after reading them all within the space of a year or two, I knew that I wanted to write books like that. Soon after, I tried to write my first novel, and I’ve actually been in the process of writing some novel or other ever since (though several of them were never finished and many of them will never see the light of day).
But even before that, I was taking part in two activities that were, in essence, prepping me to make that turn at the age of twelve. The first is one that I’ve talked about elsewhere: from the age of about three I told my mother stories. I don’t actually have memories of doing this until somewhere around age five, but we have the stories, typed on our typewriter on brightly colored paper and then sometimes illustrated (badly) by me, to prove that I was doing this before then. Here’s the first story I ever wrote:
Once there was a green frog that lived on a lily pad. She loved to swim. She was the queen. She had a friend called the king.
One day she was very sad and cried big frozen tears. The king asked, “Why are you crying big frozen tears?” She said sadly, “Because the river is frozen. I can't swim.”
Kind of minimalist, but I was three. (Reading it now, I'm amused that the kind and queen are apparently “just friends.”) According to the family legend, my mom promptly called my father after she had finished writing the story down and told him that I was “going to be a writer.”
In any case, that story started a trend, so that I now have a large binder stuffed full of typed-out stories from my childhood. (They got a bit longer, and acquired titles like “A Black Cat Meets a Jack-o-lantern and They Both Meet a Witch and They All Meet Ghost.”) It’s not child prodigy stuff, but it was fun-and a lot of kinds of fun thrown together. I got to tell a story, spend time with my mom, usually play around on the typewriter when she was finished typing the story up. (I liked to type before I could actually read or write, making pictures with things like the @ sign, which I decided was a snail. The @ sign was my favorite.)
The other thing that I feel had a real influence on me writer-wise before I officially decided that I wanted to become a writer came about mainly due to the fact that my mother was a landscaper for most of my young childhood. She worked for both private homes and larger companies, so I spent many, many spring, summer and fall days stuck in people’s yards or places like the gardens of Boston Avenue Methodist Church in Tulsa while my mom gardened. It wasn’t so bad, actually; I was pretty good at entertaining myself as a kid. When I wasn't entertaining myself, though, one of the things that we did to keep me busy was to “play Robin Hood.”
What this involved was me taking on the persona of a character, generally from an animated movie. My favorite one, the one that we spent the most time playing was Robin Hood, from the Disney version. So I would be Robin Hood, and my mom would be everyone else. Maid Marion, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Little John, King John, the various little kid rabbits and turtles. And then I would start some sort of story. We had to rob the king’s castle, escape from the castle, infiltrate the Sheriff’s guard, rescue Maid Marion-everything that a kid could think of Robin Hood doing. Basically, we were roleplaying, though I didn’t know the word at the time. I would dash around and act things out, while my mom would supply the dialogue for her characters. Or, generally, parrot back the lines that I told her. (It was only as an adult that my mom told me that it was annoying to only rarely get to make up her own lines. As a kid, I never realized that prefacing everything I told her with “say that,” might get old after a while.)
We played this a lot. I mean, a whole lot. Not always Robin Hood, although I’d say that was the game 85% of the time. We also played The Secret of Nimh (I was Jeremy the crow, for some reason, rather than Mrs. Frisby), 101 Dalmatians (Me: Rolly the puppy. My mom: the other 100 puppies plus humans), and others. I did this to a lesser extent with my dad, usually to the tune of Thundercats (though with my dad it involved more wrestling and mock-fighting).
And I loved it. Really and truly loved it. At the time, I didn’t think of it as prepping me to be able to tell stories. I just liked playing the game. But, looking back, it was teaching me, on a child’s scale, about writing action and suspense scenes, making up dialogue for numerous characters, and even a little about pacing.
So that's the long story to answer the question “Did you always want to be a writer?” Apparently, even before I really realized it, the answer was yes.
But even before that, I was taking part in two activities that were, in essence, prepping me to make that turn at the age of twelve. The first is one that I’ve talked about elsewhere: from the age of about three I told my mother stories. I don’t actually have memories of doing this until somewhere around age five, but we have the stories, typed on our typewriter on brightly colored paper and then sometimes illustrated (badly) by me, to prove that I was doing this before then. Here’s the first story I ever wrote:
Once there was a green frog that lived on a lily pad. She loved to swim. She was the queen. She had a friend called the king.
One day she was very sad and cried big frozen tears. The king asked, “Why are you crying big frozen tears?” She said sadly, “Because the river is frozen. I can't swim.”
Kind of minimalist, but I was three. (Reading it now, I'm amused that the kind and queen are apparently “just friends.”) According to the family legend, my mom promptly called my father after she had finished writing the story down and told him that I was “going to be a writer.”
In any case, that story started a trend, so that I now have a large binder stuffed full of typed-out stories from my childhood. (They got a bit longer, and acquired titles like “A Black Cat Meets a Jack-o-lantern and They Both Meet a Witch and They All Meet Ghost.”) It’s not child prodigy stuff, but it was fun-and a lot of kinds of fun thrown together. I got to tell a story, spend time with my mom, usually play around on the typewriter when she was finished typing the story up. (I liked to type before I could actually read or write, making pictures with things like the @ sign, which I decided was a snail. The @ sign was my favorite.)
The other thing that I feel had a real influence on me writer-wise before I officially decided that I wanted to become a writer came about mainly due to the fact that my mother was a landscaper for most of my young childhood. She worked for both private homes and larger companies, so I spent many, many spring, summer and fall days stuck in people’s yards or places like the gardens of Boston Avenue Methodist Church in Tulsa while my mom gardened. It wasn’t so bad, actually; I was pretty good at entertaining myself as a kid. When I wasn't entertaining myself, though, one of the things that we did to keep me busy was to “play Robin Hood.”
What this involved was me taking on the persona of a character, generally from an animated movie. My favorite one, the one that we spent the most time playing was Robin Hood, from the Disney version. So I would be Robin Hood, and my mom would be everyone else. Maid Marion, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Little John, King John, the various little kid rabbits and turtles. And then I would start some sort of story. We had to rob the king’s castle, escape from the castle, infiltrate the Sheriff’s guard, rescue Maid Marion-everything that a kid could think of Robin Hood doing. Basically, we were roleplaying, though I didn’t know the word at the time. I would dash around and act things out, while my mom would supply the dialogue for her characters. Or, generally, parrot back the lines that I told her. (It was only as an adult that my mom told me that it was annoying to only rarely get to make up her own lines. As a kid, I never realized that prefacing everything I told her with “say that,” might get old after a while.)
We played this a lot. I mean, a whole lot. Not always Robin Hood, although I’d say that was the game 85% of the time. We also played The Secret of Nimh (I was Jeremy the crow, for some reason, rather than Mrs. Frisby), 101 Dalmatians (Me: Rolly the puppy. My mom: the other 100 puppies plus humans), and others. I did this to a lesser extent with my dad, usually to the tune of Thundercats (though with my dad it involved more wrestling and mock-fighting).
And I loved it. Really and truly loved it. At the time, I didn’t think of it as prepping me to be able to tell stories. I just liked playing the game. But, looking back, it was teaching me, on a child’s scale, about writing action and suspense scenes, making up dialogue for numerous characters, and even a little about pacing.
So that's the long story to answer the question “Did you always want to be a writer?” Apparently, even before I really realized it, the answer was yes.