RTW: Who helped you in your journey?

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival’ where YA Highway’s contributors post a weekly writing or reading related question and answer it on our own blogs.  You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s unique take on the topic.

This weeks topic:

Who has helped you on your reading/writing/publishing journey?

First I have to thank my Ma (grandma on mom’s side) she and Pa raised me until I was 4 (Navy mom sent off).  Ma would read to me every night before bed and teach me to read.  I learned to read rather early, mostly it was memorization word for word and then I started putting words I knew in my head to what I seen.  I read all the time up until high school because of her.

My 5^th grade teacher Ms. Bishop who had me writing a short story for an assignment and showed me how much fun it could be to write something from my imagination. 

I stopped reading and writing through high school.  I had too much to read for classes that I won’t lie I didn’t want to read and found difficult to give my attention to and thus couldn’t read anything that kept my interest because I felt bad.  Reading a new book when you haven’t done your homework didn’t seem right.  Yes I was studious.  Then it just seemed to be forgotten.  In college I would read what I had to yet again and nothing more.  Until a TV show of all things reignited my love to read and write.

So I’d like to thank the show Moonlight and all of the amazing readers/writers who I found in fan fiction.  One in particular is Patty, she introduced me to it and told me to go for it.  I couldn’t believe how much fun it was to start again.  And through that and the friends I met through there I had people recommend the Twilight books (Tammi said they had some semblance to main characters in Moonlight).  I started and I was hooked on reading once more and haven’t stopped since.  Same with writing, I’ve been writing a fan fiction to this day and along the way realized I had my own original story to tell as well.

Erin, who I worked with and found a fellow writer in. Now we disagree a bit on things like what is considered good literature but it’s fun, we push each other.  We get each other to read things and also push each other to write (she’s working on a couple stories too).  She is someone I can always call when I’m not sure if Lexi is giving me a bit of a conundrum to work out.  She also makes me laugh and goes to the movies with me so we can goof off and just spitball ideas of crazy stories and fun adventures we hope to have one day when we’re super successful authors J.

Morgan too, though we’ve lost touch over the last year.  We always talked about writing a movie.  We loved movies and thought we could write one where the characters didn’t do stupid things, like run up the stairs when the door is 5 ft away, or be free but hear something and go back into danger to investigate.  We started throwing around ideas as a joke but I really started writing them down, plot lines and character notes and outlines.  I still have it and one day hope to finish it.

All of the amazing people whom I’ve had the pleasure to meet at different writers conferences and online through blogs.  Hearing words of encouragement from different people who are in different stages of their writing journey makes me feel I can do this when I get down and discouraged.  That includes you all.  Thank you.

So who helped you?