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 5th 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?
