I was born with a passion for books that started at a young age.One day, when I was about three, my mother caught me scribbling lines under each sentence of Dr.Seuss' The Cat in the Hat.She was appalled.She thought I was defacing the book.When she asked me what I was doing, I said, "I'm writing the story." I think even then I realized how important books would become in my life.About ten years passed and I had a book collection that was the envy of my friends.I had every Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys book, plus numerous Bobbsey Twins novels and others.Every word was like gold to me, something to be treasured.While my mother read her romance novels and my father read his science fiction tomes, I slipped away into the world of youthful investigations, following clues and solving mysteries often with a flashlight under my blanket.I was captivated by these authors' golden words and often stayed way past my bedtime.Reading is very therapeutic and can take your mind off stress and pain, so my books became my best friends, always there when times were rough.What better way to escape the mundane life of a pre-teen and forget about chores, school and low self-esteem issues than to bury oneself in an intriguing book? These stories took me away to other worlds, to 'live' other lives, if only for an hour or two.As a young teen, I collected Barbara Cartland and Harlequin romances and other adult fiction.One day I was offered a job as a journalist for a small BC newspaper.I was thrilled.Masset Meanderings became my column and I was paid about $5.00/week.Years later, I wrote a health and beauty column for another newspaper.But my deepest passion rested in fiction and books.At fifteen, I had a growing collection of Stephen King, John Saul and Dean Koontz books and was fascinated by stories of suspense and horror.Inspired, I began to write my first novel.It took me a year to complete and I was proud of that accomplishment.Yearning for someone to tell me it was good, I brought the typewritten manuscript to school and kept it in my locker until I could show it to my language arts teacher.However, when I returned to my locker, someone had broken in and my manuscript was gone, and since this was well before home computers and laptops, it was my only copy.I was devastated.This time, they were my golden words.And someone had stolen them.That day I learned that there is a deeper connection to the words we write.We own each word.If we have written something, those words have stemmed from our thoughts and feelings.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Golden Words - From Reader to Author
I was born with a passion for books that started at a young age.One day, when I was about three, my mother caught me scribbling lines under each sentence of Dr.Seuss' The Cat in the Hat.She was appalled.She thought I was defacing the book.When she asked me what I was doing, I said, "I'm writing the story." I think even then I realized how important books would become in my life.About ten years passed and I had a book collection that was the envy of my friends.I had every Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys book, plus numerous Bobbsey Twins novels and others.Every word was like gold to me, something to be treasured.While my mother read her romance novels and my father read his science fiction tomes, I slipped away into the world of youthful investigations, following clues and solving mysteries often with a flashlight under my blanket.I was captivated by these authors' golden words and often stayed way past my bedtime.Reading is very therapeutic and can take your mind off stress and pain, so my books became my best friends, always there when times were rough.What better way to escape the mundane life of a pre-teen and forget about chores, school and low self-esteem issues than to bury oneself in an intriguing book? These stories took me away to other worlds, to 'live' other lives, if only for an hour or two.As a young teen, I collected Barbara Cartland and Harlequin romances and other adult fiction.One day I was offered a job as a journalist for a small BC newspaper.I was thrilled.Masset Meanderings became my column and I was paid about $5.00/week.Years later, I wrote a health and beauty column for another newspaper.But my deepest passion rested in fiction and books.At fifteen, I had a growing collection of Stephen King, John Saul and Dean Koontz books and was fascinated by stories of suspense and horror.Inspired, I began to write my first novel.It took me a year to complete and I was proud of that accomplishment.Yearning for someone to tell me it was good, I brought the typewritten manuscript to school and kept it in my locker until I could show it to my language arts teacher.However, when I returned to my locker, someone had broken in and my manuscript was gone, and since this was well before home computers and laptops, it was my only copy.I was devastated.This time, they were my golden words.And someone had stolen them.That day I learned that there is a deeper connection to the words we write.We own each word.If we have written something, those words have stemmed from our thoughts and feelings.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment