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The Spark That Lit Your Fire
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I agree with you completely! :D
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Yeah, my brother and I produced a few movies that my parents weren't too keen on, too. We made a western and showed it to them. The only thing they focused on was a burning map at the beginning (Bonanza influence) and that we didn't frame it well. You could see we were starting a fire in the kitchen sink with the map over it. Apparently the notion that we could have set the kitchen on fire was more important to them than the plot of our film.
Richard wrote: "In current events we were tasked with writing a story, a task I deliciously sunk my hands into. I was going to write about a person approaching a haunted house. I thought it was pretty good, but the teacher failed me..."
In an English class in college, we were assigned to write an account of what we believed happened to the people aboard the Mary Celeste. The teacher failed me because I wrote a story about an alien invasion and the passengers and crew being taken aboard a flying saucer. So, I guess we weren't really supposed to write what we believed but what would be believable to her.
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Agreed. I had a few of those, too, including my first grade teacher. My dad taught me to read before I started Kindergarten, but Mrs. Wright came to some weird conclusion that I couldn't read and put me in with the beginning readers. So, at home I was reading Beverly Cleary and the Hardy Boys, but in school I was reading, "Sam has a mint. The ant is on the mint."
She tried telling my parents they spelled my name wrong, too. Yeah, she was a gem.
Dwayne wrote: "She tried telling my parents they spelled my name wrong, too. Yeah, she was a gem ..."
Sad but still too funny. That wasn't any of her business. Ah Teachers...some are real gems, while others shouldn't even be teaching.
I remember my art teacher telling me I had absolutely no imagination and for the longest time, I believed him.
Dwayne wrote: "Agreed. I had a few of those, too, including my first grade teacher. My dad taught me to read before I started Kindergarten, but Mrs. Wright came to some weird conclusion that I couldn't read and put me in with the beginning readers. So, at home I was reading Beverly Cleary and the Hardy Boys, but in school I was reading, "Sam has a mint. The ant is on the mint.""What the hell? I had one of them as well. I went from advanced reading in one school district to remedial reading in another because the teacher didn't like that my mother asked if there was a program for advanced students.
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That's silly. Everyone has an imagination.
Dwayne wrote: "G.G. wrote: "I remember my art teacher telling me I had absolutely no imagination "That's silly. Everyone has an imagination."
Yeah, I couldn't imagine someone not having an imagin... uh oh
I'd always loved the "Little House on the Prairie" books and liked hearing how Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote them. When I was nine my cousin told me I should write a book, so I tried! As I grew up, my school papers turned into historical thesis papers or lengthy fiction stories.Now, I find myself writing and publishing what I want to read...the stories I couldn't find when I was kid. I write to share my passion for historical studies and to share my values...always hoping to inspire others.
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1. How many authors genuinely didn't want to be authors.
2. How many teachers appear to be, and pardon my French here, absolute Cunt Baskéts.
G.G. wrote: "I remember my art teacher telling me I had absolutely no imagination and for the longest time, I believed him..."A first grade teacher I had in Brooklyn, NY told me I was pronouncing my name wrong!
"It should be pronounced MEE-kuh, not MY-kuh."
Like hell. It's my name f---ing name, so f--- you! I didn't say that of course. But needless to say, I was not impressed.
I had an English teacher that failed me with a 69.3 my 10th grade year, after she told me what I needed to get on her final exam to pass. I got more than I needed (she told me I needed a 92, and I scored a 96) but she failed me anyway. When I confronted her about it, her explanation was that someone needed to teach me that I can't go through life not turning in assignments and then expecting to succeed.I had a lot of other similar incidents with educators growing up (Why are you even asking me if I did my homework? You know I didn't.) But she really messed my education up. I always guessed that was her true intent, to punish me because I didn't do a book report on The Scarlet Letter and called it overly dramatic garbage or something.
Micah wrote: "A first grade teacher I had in Brooklyn, NY told me I was pronouncing my name wrong!"It should be pronounced MEE-kuh, not MY-kuh."
Like hell. It's my name f---ing name, so f--- you! I didn't say that of course. But needless to say, I was not impressed..."
Too funny! What makes me laugh even more is that I keep asking the hubby why so and so names are pronounced this way compared to let's say the rest of the English language, and his answer never ever change: It's a name. People can and will pronounce it the way they want. It has no rules. And in the end, it's true. Unless you live in a country where the government normalizes names, of course. Then it's another story but else. Freedom of choice. Pronounce and write your child name the way you want it, not the way others feel it should be.
(BTW, I always loved your name, no matter how people pronounce it.) :)
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2. How many teachers appear to be, and pardon my French here, absolute Cunt Baskéts."
1. That is surprising, but maybe it's because when we're young and have to write for school all the time, there's little joy in it. Being a writer sounds like doing homework all the time. I don't know.
2. Sadly, that one doesn't surprise me that much. There are some wonderful teachers out there, but there are some that just never should have considered working with kids. I had a fairly even mix of both all my life.
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C.B. wrote: "Michael wrote: "I would've stopped if it weren't for my tenth grade English teacher. If not for her support and encouragement, I'd be doing something else with my time right now. "So it is her fault we are not enjoying The Fantastic Michael and His Amazing Tap-Dancing Wiener Dog Show right now?!"
I do spend some of my spare time juggling hedgehogs so there's still hope.
My spark?The politics of war and the politics of deception, those did it for me.
I've done some blogging before. I never thought I had it in me to write a novel.
But then I had the idea to explore how it would be to imagine a world working on different principles than ours as well as one working on similar, but more extreme ones.
In between I got frustrated and started a bit of rhyming and that was the beginning of my poetry book.
And so I went back to my story about Hope and her ancestor David.
Of course coming from a political angle and not really being an entertainer whatever I write be it tweets or blog-posts or poems or a novel, they're all part of my soapbox.
That's the place where I'm standing, even if nobody is listening and I'm all alone, I'm still there, crying, sighing, yelling while lifting my hands up in utter frustration:
please, please, please
do make peace
I knew I wanted to be a writer after I read Winter Dreams by F. Scott Fitzgerald in an Introduction to Fiction class. He completely caught the inner turmoil of a young man in his twenties.
Dwayne wrote: "Christina wrote: "That was no teacher. That was a bored and disgruntled child minder who made a poor career choice. I'm sorry you had to go through that and even more sorry that this is not uncommo..."That makes me think of the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird where Scout is told by her teacher that she needs to unlearn to read because the way she was taught wasn't the right way.
G.G. wrote: "(BTW, I always loved your name, no matter how people pronounce it.) :) "Thank you. I invented it. Just remember that the next time someone uses the name w/out my permission. ;D
It wasn't until I was well into my 30s before I saw anyone else use the name outside of the Bible and fiction (the old TV show The Rifleman had a character named Micah).
But I feel vindicated: Everyone I've seen using the name, in all its variations (met a girl named Myka once), pronounces it as I do. Might be different in other countries, though.
Ann wrote: "Teachers + Christian School environment = Well, that would be why I write :)"Guy I knew in college went to an all male, military, Catholic school. Boy was he a mess!
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I know the feeling, I ended up graduating a year late because I didn't do math homework. The teacher accused me of cheating because I could do geometric equations in my head >.> I know I should write it down, but I'm not going to use it outside of the class room, I planned on being a people person!
Dwayne wrote: In an English class in college, we were assigned to write an account of what we believed happened to the people aboard the Mary Celeste. The teacher failed me because I wrote a story about an alien invasion and the passengers and crew being taken aboard a flying saucer. So, I guess we weren't really supposed to write what we believed but what would be believable to her. Kind of reminds me of the college I went to and the writing course I took. Policy was that you couldn't submit anything sci-fi or fantasy, which just boggled my mind. Even the teachers weren't too happy with the policy (in fact, they usually graded whatever you turned in regardless of the genre). It's creative writing, and yet we weren't allowed to be creative. It was quite the head-scratcher.
(And in the end, I learned more about writing from writing fanfiction than I did from those courses. Although at least the courses got me reading things I wouldn't have otherwise thought to read).
First it was music that lit my fire, the songs I heard on the radio, when I was twelve, in 1964. One day that year I picked up a piece of brown paper and scribbled on it the verses of my first song, which I was puzzled by, for I heard them in my head, not on the radio. I was pleased to have written something that had nothing to do with school. While still a schoolboy, I wrote some more songs, together with verses without tunes, which I considered to be poetry, and stories, most of which were left unfinished. I am sixty three now, and have never stopped writing since I was twelve.
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Dear Maker! Teachers, some of them are so great it is beyond compare. Others...
Story One: I had taken Calculus 12 and Math 12. The same teacher. He gave the same questions on tests. You couldn't use Calculus equations on Math tests, or Math equations on Calculus equations.
My brain refused to learn the harder version of doing problems. I did the most efficient way. I couldn't keep the ways to do things separate. I now use Mathculus.
Work counted for 50% of the grade on tests and homework. I always showed it all, but I don't think I ever got more than 10% - 15% of the work marks. Famously scored a 2% grade on the 'Super Easy Answers Don't Count Test!' Got all the stupid answers though for all the stupid tests and work though. He refused to change his marking methods. Barely passed both classes.
Story Two: 5th grade teacher was appalled by my penmanship. Said my writing looked like it was always written in crayon by a kindergarten student. She wrote that on my geography report, that I had spent hours on and had twelve pages more than the minimum allowed (minimum was 2) thanks to the complicated art diagrams, extra research, and photographs I actually took. Failed it.
Was so distraught that for every project, test, assignment, anything after that I spent hours and hours making sure my printing was as straight and legible as possible. No matter how hard I tried, she still said it was awful (although I know for a fact the very next Monday it was excellent). She still gave me horrible marks, and tried to hold me back. When my parents went to see the Principal he was astounded that she thought my printing was illegible. It was far easier to read than hers!
I still write with letters straighter than a military cemetery.
Story Three: My grade 7 teacher was the gym teacher for the school. He based all marks entirely on how good people were at gym. *Spoiler alert: I'm bad at gym. I tried, but... I wasn't a star. I got bad marks all year.
I even lost significant marks in Science class for not being 'into camping'.
He traded off other classes with other teachers, so classes I didn't have him I got all As. His classes, Cs. All the jocks got As in those classes and failed the others...
How do teachers like these keep their jobs?
I've been kicking the idea to write a fantasy detective for a few years, never got around to even giving him a name.But back in January my wife just finished ASOIAF and complained that there was nothing good left to read. So since the nights were hot and I couldn't sleep (I live in Austalia...) I just sat down and started to write a novel for her...
So I owe that spark to my darling wife :)
As for how I got on from there - I just kept writing. I had the idea for the setting (fantasy world based on ancient Rome) and for the ending (we'll call it a locked-room mystery).
I finished the first chapter in two nights, read it and thought to myself "OMFG what did I get myself into now?". But I kept going, making sure to write daily. The first part was fun, the second part was a breeze of cackling madly to myself, the third part was excruciating in tying all the loose ends back together.
It's under review now (i.e. wife finally gets to read it). Also gave it a few friends and family to read and help with editing, and so far they like it :)
I hope to publish in a few weeks - at which point I will probably start posting "achievement unlocked" messages everywhere, for completing a childhood dream of seeing my name in print.
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Riley wrote: "The other thing I love, all those who say they hated writing all seem to say "So I just kept at it!" That's exactly how I feel as well."Oh, I loved it! In the same sense that one loves a terrifying roller-coaster, one with horribly creaky lines maintained by a crazy old weirdo.
What's not to love? :)
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And you would think college would be a place of broader thinking instead of more narrow. The things I wrote in high school creative writing were often a bit on the fantastic side. One I recall was pure horror. One was kind of a weird tale about mysterious people that only appear when it storms. My teacher loved them.
And I guess when I was at Iowa State the instructor didn't mind my weird stories. She seemed to kind of like them.
But, this one instructor, the one that didn't like my flying saucer story - I still don't get what the problem was and I wish I had half the nerve I do now. I should have fought for a better grade. After all, just because there is no solid proof that aliens, flying saucers and the like do not exist is no reason to think they can't.
A lot of fascinating and inspiring stories here. Thanks, Micah, for asking the question.It’s also making me realize how lucky I was growing up. I had a couple of nitwit teachers, but I had plenty of awesome ones. My 7th-grade English teacher (who’d also taught my two older brothers) ruled the class with an iron fist (velvet glove optional), but she was scrupulously fair with both criticism and praise, and effective at making you want to do better. She had us read James Baldwin, announcing that it had the F-word in it. She told us it had a place in literature, it was sometimes necessary and appropriate (as she felt it was in the his work), and it was to be treated with respect.
I have to say that when your elderly, upright, strict and proper English teacher says “f---” in class not once but several times, it gets your attention. And no one complained: not about that or any of the other themes in Baldwin’s work. It was AP English -- we were 12 -- we were expected to be able to handle it. And being expected to, we did. (Unfortunately, she was also terminally ill with cancer, although no one knew and she never gave any hint of it. She died over Christmas break. The guy who took over was a OK, but something of a disappointment to us.)
In the 8th grade, I took metal shop and pretty much fell in love with metalworking. The teacher took me aside on day and made an offer: I could use the shop after-hours, as long I cleaned everything thing up. I promised I would. He handed me the shop keys and said: “Don’t embarrass me.” So I was in there after school, on weekends, even at night, forging and brazing and making all sorts of stuff. It worked out great. I would’ve gone to the stake before I embarrassed him.
When I wrote a “controversial” fantasy story in my high school creative writing class (recounted elsewhere here), the English department supported me against my incensed creative writing teacher, and other teachers praised my work (although I found it deeply embarrassing at the time).
It seems that bad teachers fall into two camps: those who really don’t like what they’re doing and just want to exert their authority, in whatever way or act on their predilections, grudges, whatever; and those who want to protect kids from failure. I see that latter a lot: don’t try to be a writer or an artist -- it’s too hard, you’ll never make a living. I still see it: the average indie author will make less that $50 off their book, the market is glutted, no one will find you, and so on.
I’m not sure I was encouraged to fail growing up, but I was encouraged in my desire to try things, which led to a lot of crashing and burning. (I was stubborn and having two older and smarter brothers who made stuff look easy I suspect convinced me I had something to prove.) My dad would offer advice after the first failure or two; I’d reject it, and eventually he’d pluck my small, muttering and cussing self out of whatever wreckage I’d created, and renew the offer, at which point, I’d grumble and accept. And then things got very much better. (He knew in my case that beating myself bloody on a problem would eventually produce a receptive mind.)
So I never got the idea that failing mattered. I learned that trying mattered. Yes, there were going to be times when you limped home, popped a beer, ordered pizza and said: “Dammit. Been a hell of day. SOB got the better of me this time.” Then you’d drink the beer, eat the pizza, swallow some analgesics and say: “Gonna get ’em tomorrow, though.”
Nice to see that sentiment expressed so well in this thread (and more elegantly, too.)
Riley wrote: "Charles wrote: "I had an English teacher that failed me with a 69.3 my 10th grade year, after she told me what I needed to get on her final exam to pass. I got more than I needed (she told me I ne..."Yep. Most of my teachers were happy for me, even in my advanced classes. Not her though. I failed algebra like 3 times for the same reasons you named.
Owen wrote: "A lot of fascinating and inspiring stories here. Thanks, Micah, for asking the question.It’s also making me realize how lucky I was growing up. I had a couple of nitwit teachers, but I had plenty..."
This is strangely relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAIJD...
So many great stories!My grandmother was a newspaper columnist and I am a Journalism graduate. I had intended on being a Journalist, but poor health kept me from that goal. I ended up doing office work, and have stayed in that field since.
I've always wanted to write, ever since I could read and type. Before learning to type (at age 7), I handwrote everything. I wrote mostly short stories, but tried to write a novel when I was 13 on my manual typewriter, which was supposed to be a series, but never happened.
When I was 16 I discovered poetry and spent a few years doing that.
In 2001, I was laid off from my job and had very little to do except look for work. So I decided to write a novel. And this time I got pretty far -- until I got back to work and got engaged to my first husband. Once again, I had to set it aside.
In 2003, I discovered National Novel Writing Month and wrote (and finished!) my first novel. The experience showed me that I could fit writing into my life, and it was so much fun, I didn't want to stop. Since then, I've written almost every day with a few exceptions. I would like to write fulltime, but that hasn't happened yet. I self-pubbed Fey Touched (which is more or less a rewrite of my first NaNo novel) in 2012. The writing bug has bitten me very hard. ;) I recently took a few months off after my most recent release, and it always feels so surreal, like something's missing from my life. I always get back to it. It helps keep me sane. Well, mostly. ;)
(Also, I am now in possession of my grandmother's Smith Corona typewriter, which I estimate to be about 100 years old. Wild.)
I grew up reading a whole lot as a child, but when I made it through Kenneth Grahame's beautiful "The Wind in the Willows" I realized that writing was something magical. I've been writing every day since.
Oh, boy. I guess my problem was the flame sputtered a lot, smoldered but never died. I started writing in high school, and then I'd do what I always do get distracted by something shiny. I think I reached a point of grown up where I just embraced it, acknowledged that nothing comes with out determination to make it happen, and started prioritizing my soul for a change. Drama there, but you get it.
It's the one constant I have always come home to; I am a writer.
I never wrote anything longer than an 8 page term paper until I was 45. However, I have always loved to read. After working since the age of 15 I found myself a lonely and bored stay at home dad. My dad was in organized crime. Think Redneck Tony Soprano. He always said he was going to write a book. Well, he died before that happened. I had quite a childhood and a pretty crazy adulthood until I settled down with a good WI Christian girl that showed me they way. Back to being a stay at home dad. I was bored and thought, Hey, I'll write a book.I typed chapter 1 and made it to chapter 20 and stopped. I thought to myself, you're a fool. You can't do this. Then I was talking to the lady at the liquor store who told me her dad used to write and she would be interested in reading what I wrote. So I printed out the first twenty chapters and gave them to her.
Two weeks later I went back to a crowded liquor store where she was working the register. She saw me and stopped, walked through the crowd of people, stuck her finger in my chest and said, "Don't you dare quit writing." That's when the liquor store lady became my muse. I would write a chapter or two a week and take it to her. 77 chapters later, Amy Lynn was born.
Apparently I'm a natural story teller but a sucky author. People loved the story and came from all over to help me for free. After four re-edits and three cover changes,Amy Lynn was a self published success. Three novels later I'm getting the hang of this book thing. I've even made a little bit of money.
I owe it all, to the cashier at the liquor store who gave me permission to be something I thought I could never be. An Author.
One of my earliest memories was of the children's section in our one-room library in my home town. The smell of the wood, cleaning products, the smell of the books. Their bright colors all lined up on the shelves. The pride of having my own library card like my sisters and brother. The library was a place I went during the summer because it was cool inside and I could lose myself for hours reading. The stories I read inspired me to write stories of my own-five page novels written on Big Red tablets, complete with covers and illustrations. I gave one of them to the librarian, Mrs. Wilson, and she told me one day that I should be a writer. I loved inventing people and places and escaping to them from the less than exciting life of living in a housing project in the 1960s. In high school my English Lit teacher took me aside and told me I should pursue a career in writing. The instructor I had in my first year of college said the same thing and gave me two things: a list of literary agents and my nickname, Grammatica-Bitch Goddess of Lexiconia (because I caught some typos in his syllabus). Writing became a means of relaxation, a place of vacation inside my head away from the stress of life and an island of happiness. I was blown away when I discovered people reviewed my work and liked it and now I had a small following. I still write for myself, not for the money - and I know there are some who think I'm lying about that, that I secretly wish I could be a bestselling author on the NYT list and stay at home and write all day and do interviews on the Charlie Rose Show because that's apparently what all writers want, right? :) No, I support myself by being a paralegal and a clergywoman. I write because I'm called to write.
Jack wrote: "I never wrote anything longer than an 8 page term paper until I was 45. However, I have always loved to read. After working since the age of 15 I found myself a lonely and bored stay at home dad. M..."One of the best things I've heard in a quite a while.
I love to tell stories orally or written. That's why I write.
Micah wrote: "What was the spark that lit your writing fire? Why write? What inspired you? I've seen a lot of people state that they've always wanted to be a writer. "Ever since I can remember..." It's a bit of ..."
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What sparks my fire is being able to make laugh. Once I realized my writing can impact someone's day I knew writing would be the profession for me! I love making people laugh, think,and believe.
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What sparks my fire is being able to make laugh. Once I realized my writing can impact someone's day I knew writing would be the profession for me! I love making people laugh, think,and believe.
When I was in the sixth grade, I read my first comic book -- an issue of Jim Lee and Chris Claremont's X-Men. I'd loved a lot of "genre" stuff as a kid -- Ghostbusters, TMNT -- but it wasn't until I started reading X-Men that I came away from reading thinking, "Man, I would love to create my own worlds and do this."All throughout middle school, I started drawing my own X-Men comics. By the time I got to high school, I started creating my own characters. I wrote and drew as much as I could, and I had it in my head that as soon as I graduated from college, I was going to work for Marvel.
Two years into college, I fell out of love with drawing. I stopped collecting comics -- though as a matter of convenience, more than anything. But I never stopped writing. I'd get blocked from time to time, but I kept writing. Especially once I discovered the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer... that show and everything it entailed led to a rush of inspiration led to me re-booting all of my characters, and for the first time, I considered writing a novel instead of creating comics.
Fast-forward a decade, and Bounty is now a published work. One of my original comic book creations is now my debut novel. People who've read it talk about how it seems very "comic book-y," and I laugh because that character was one of my first creations in high school.
Basically, without comic books, I'm probably not a writer.
Micah wrote: "What was the spark that lit your writing fire? Why write? What inspired you? I've seen a lot of people state that they've always wanted to be a writer. "Ever since I can remember..." It's a bit of ..."I can tell stories, but I couldn't write them -- except non-fiction first person. There's a number of essays on my blog at matthart.com, where I tell stories about various things in my life. I always wanted to write some fiction, and I had a few scenarios or ideas. I wrote parts of them as short stories, but nothing really worked. I found it hard to write, hard to create the story.
I continued writing, and did a lot of reading and wishing I could write. Then I read The Perseid Collapse, and learned about Kindle Worlds. I wrote a first-person short story -- and it finally clicked: first person. So I have a book with two short stories in Kindle Worlds, and reviews were good (mainly too short -- the reviews were when I had only one short story in the book).
While reading another apocalypse series, I started thinking about scenarios, and came up with the unique one that graces the pages of my book, The Fractured Earth. I started writing first person, with the scenario in mind, and it worked! And I even have a decent amount of the book in third person omniscient.
So the spark for me was 1) Finding my voice (first person), 2) Opportunity (Kindle Worlds), and 3) Unique idea.
As a scientist, I've been writing technical material for years, including a food safety book that was reviewed in the New England Journal of Medicine. Abouth 3 1/2 years ago, I dropped in on a "write to a prompt" workshop and kept on coming back. That's where I found my fiction voice. I started with short pieces (300-500 words); then one of the prompts triggered a short piece that was the spark for my debut novel.
As a kid I wanted to be a paleontologist and study dinosaurs. Later in my teens I started on the path towards engineering though I learned that I had a gift for creative writing, especially in being able to draw people into a setting and touch emotions with words. Yet with this gift I struggled with the mechanics of grammar and spelling so I never really pursued it other than short stories and/or poems at Christmas as gifts. I wrote several non-fiction works, including a book teaching law enforcement how to deal with aggressive dogs that was based on the classes I taught but back in my mind were (and still are) numerous stories.
My first attempt at getting those stories out was a fiction novel that was way too complex to approach a publisher with so I shelved it. It wasn't until three years ago that I decided to make another effort with a simpler story but one with much deeper emotional content which is what I recently self-published.
Whether or not I will ever be able to make a living writing is yet to be seen but I at least started down the path of more consistent story telling. If for no other reason than to not keep gifts hidden but to share with all.
Dwayne wrote: "Micah wrote: "So...yeah...what about you? What's your real spark?"I hated writing when I was a child. Hated it! But, my teachers felt I had some kind of talent. I had a story published in a local..."
Ha-Ha--that poem.
As a kid I always wanted to write a book, started with short stories and had each and every one of them rejected. I have to admit, I wasn't the best in English at school either. So when I began writing my first book - The Game Master - I was wondering whether I'd be able to hack it after 35 years of not even attempting any creative writing. I was a bit dumbfounded when my copy editor thought my writing ability was a decent way above average...
What lit my fire? I'm a natural analyst and analyse just about everything - more in a conceptual basis. Having lived in the UK for 31 years and Asia for 27 years, I have been able to recognise social cycles, how they are borne from wealth - or lack of - and how society develops from these changes in cycles. I enjoy observing people and events.
The Game Master is a book about how we behave (in this case children growing up) and allows the characters in the book to discover why others are different and what makes them different - both sexes and also goes (gently) into child neglect and physical abuse but with a healthy dose of fun stuff that makes the learning for children wrinkle free.
I can't say this lit the spark, but it did add fuel to the fire (it was a pretty dinky fire though). When I was reading a lot of fantasy and sci-fi in my teens, I often got very ticked off when authors "botched" (in my teenaged view) an ending. After a number of these, I thought: "I don't have to stand for this." And then I'd break out a pencil and write a new ending. One thing led to another (as they say).
I did the same thing. If I hated how a book or comic turned out I felt I could do one better. It'd morph and change so much from the original source I'd end up with something original XD
Jack wrote: "I never wrote anything longer than an 8 page term paper until I was 45. However, I have always loved to read. After working since the age of 15 I found myself a lonely and bored stay at home dad. M..."Interesting and teaching story. Shows how insecure one could be understanding that you can't really judge your own work and how one supportive voice can be so encouraging
And as a kid, as far as I remember, I wanted to be a cosmonaut -:)
Support for Indie Authors
Books mentioned in this topic
The Perseid Collapse (other topics)The Fractured Earth (other topics)
It would be ten years later before I decided to share some of the stories I was creating during one of the toughest times in my life - my first book is set to release on my birthday: July 25, 2015."
Sad that you had to endure a rotten relationship, but it's good something came of it. I wish you much success!