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Books, Lane Alton, Life, My writing roots, Personal, Reading, Writing
I have been writing as long as I can remember. Since I was in first grade in fact. I remember typing my short stories on my cousin’s typewriter, or having my grandmother prepare them for me. She would always make big changes to the stories that I didn’t understand and would become upset about. I remember going to my kindergarten teacher’s class to read my paragraph-long stories to her students. I loved it.
Now that I look back on what kept me writing all of these years, it definitely came from reading. My mother would take me to the learning station to buy books to read and learning booklets to improve my learning skills from home. I would have to thank her for that. She even had a hardcover children’s book made for me. I was the main character, a mermaid, who fell inlove with a Prince. I can’t remember anything more than the plot, but I’m sure you have caught on to the fact that she took the idea from the little mermaid. At the time, I didn’t care. I was more excited that my name was printed in a book.
As I got older I began to read more and write more for school. I enjoyed the periodic book reports, writing assignments, and research projects. I loved constructing well written essays. There was a time where I stopped writing all together and began to focus on television, music, and playing sports. My preteen years.
As much as I loved writing, it’d probably shock you to know that there was a time that I completely dreaded writing. It was in 11th grade. That school year I joined our high school newspaper to start writing more because I had dreams of working with magazines and doing photography. I HATED IT! I didn’t like that I didn’t get the creative freedom to write what ever I wanted to. Depending on the particular time of the year, the students were assigned leads to go after. It was all over the place. 20 of the 30-40 articles that graced the newspaper would be about the same exact topic but from different angles -opinions, teachers’ perspectives, parents’ perspectives, students’ perspectives, and so on. That’s why students would rush to secure sports in the Opinion and Entertainment sections where they would write about their particular interests. I never went after those either. I wanted to write about things that were affecting the school the most and bring awareness to it. Of course that didn’t go well and I was forced to throw something together.
After high school, I began reading more in my leisure time and that began to motivate my writing. Most of the time I would just give my particular feelings or thoughts on a something and not post it anywhere. I would read things that I wasn’t interested in just to provoke thoughts that I had never indulged in. It really broadened my mind.
Now, I blog more and keep a daily diary. The entries start off with a quote of the day and how it pertains to my feelings of the day. It works for me. My novel was even influenced by what I read, which mostly came from newspaper articles.
The roots of my writing came from reading material that stimulated my mind and furthr allowed me to form an imagination to write fiction.
Remember to determine what helps you to formulate ideas and what poses a distraction.