The Spark Blogfest: Who Set You Off? (Part Three)

This week I'm participating in Christine Tyler's blogfest and talking about who and what made me decide to be a writer.

 Okay, for the past two days I suppose I've done enough psychoanalyzing on defining moments of my childhood and how my mom figures into all this. Let's move on to the big sparks, shall we?

When I was in sixth grade, it became my personal quest to read every book in the school library. It was part of our morning ritual; my teacher, Mr. Banning, would take roll. He'd read any memos from the office, talk about any upcoming events. Karl Tubbs, who sat next to me, would be bouncing in his seat, whispering, "Did you finish? Are you done?" When Mr. Banning called my name for roll call, I would say, "Here...Can I go to the library?" The room would explode with exclamations. Didn't I get a book yesterday? Was I really reading them? Was this some elaborate scheme to skip the first ten minutes of class every day? Why can Jeigh get a pass to the library when I can't even go to the bathroom?? [because you abused the privilege, kid.]

It made me feel really cool at the time, but now I look back on it and realize it's...kinda nerdy.

Moving on.

There was one book a boy in my class did a book report on called "Dragon's Milk", by Susan Fletcher.

I had loved a lot of books by the time I read this one, and I'd written a lot of little stories, but this book ignited that first big bomb in me, and inspired me to attempt my first epic fantasy novel. I shamelessly ripped the story off. In Dragon's Milk, a girl named Kaeldra uses dragon milk to save her little sister and then has to travel with and protect baby dragons. In my story, a girl named Kiera has to travel to find a magical plant called the Heart of Gold, which has healing properties needed to save her little sister's life. She's accompanied on her journey by her pure-white husky named, uh, Journey, I think. Sadly, at the end of the story, she realizes the Heart of Gold is not a plant as was previously thought, but the literal golden heart of her beloved dog, and she must cut it out, sacrificing her pet for her sister.

I never actually finished, but man, that's kind of sick...

Regardless of my early tendency for tragic love stories (some day maybe I'll tell you about "The Oyster and The Pearl"), this book lit the fuse and made me realize that I wanted to write something that could move someone to tears like this had done for me.