Why I Started Reading (and Writing)

My blog has been dead for years now, but every once in awhile I get into this, “I’ve got to post again, I just can’t drop it for forever,” mood. I’ve finally found something to post about. No promises but maybe, just maybe I’ll start posting more than once a year.

I’m a reader and a writer.

Nowadays I’m primarily the latter, but as a kid (when I started this blog, yikes) I was the perfect specimen of an avid reader. I never went anywhere without a book and I finished each one within mere milliseconds of seeing the cover for the first time. The local librarians always raised a brow at how many I checked out at a time, thinking surely this pixie of a girl isn’t about to read all of these within such a short time. Little did they know that the reason I was (and still am) a shrimpy kid was because I spent all my time reading, writing and drawing rather than wrestling bears or climbing mountains or whatever it is people do outside. In summary: I read a lot.

But no one is born knowing how to read just as no one is born with a pen in their hand. Except Victor Hugo, whose book Les Miserables was 1,900 pages (and that was only one of his books).

This is the story of why I started reading and writing. Spoiler alert: I’m not as cool as Victor Hugo.

When I was in Kindergarten my school was the definition of underpaid Californian public education, so my parents pulled me out to home school me. My mom started teaching me to read and I hated it right off the bat. I caught on quickly and could read anything she gave me, but I was (and still am) a stubborn kid so I didn’t like being made to do things. That was my sole reason for disliking it.

This continued until one day I heard my mom talking to her friend about how she wanted me to read Shel Silverstein’s poems, but didn’t believe I was ready to start reading something that advanced. I didn’t know who Shel Silverstein was but hearing someone say that I wasn’t advanced enough to do something… Again, I was a stubborn kid.
The next morning I woke up early, got a book of Shel Silverstein’s poems (possibly Falling Up), sat in my chair and began to read while I waited for her to wake up. When she walked downstairs I tried to play it cool by saying something along the lines of: “Oh I just found this on the bookshelf. It’s pretty good so far, have you read it?” From there I began to read everything I could get my hands on.

I started writing stories in the 1st(?) grade for essentially the same reason. My mom said “You can’t be a wild mustang tamer”, but I heard, “Go write endlessly about horses to prove that you can be a wild mustang tamer.” That impossible dream of mine actually turned into a slightly less impossible dream: publish a book.

By the time I was ten I finished reading the Harry Potter series and was completely infatuated with the idea of becoming a world renowned author like our lord and master JK Rowling. An ambitious dream if there ever was one, but still one I like to toy with to this day.

Nowadays I still write, but my goal is just to find personal happiness within the book I’ve spent the past two (going on three) years writing. If that book is published one day, good for it! But for now the writing is what’s important.

How’s that for a return?

For those of you interested, my email is in my ‘About’ section, but I’m most active on my DeviantArt, Clockwork-Jack! I post my art and (some) writing there, since it’s become a substitute for my blog over the years. If you have any questions about writing (or anything?) shoot me a message via either of those!