What Inspires Me to Write
By Lori Wilde
©2005 Lori Wilde. All Rights Reserved.
From the time I was a small child and would open a new book and stick my nose down on the page to inhale that heady scent, I knew writing was what I’d been made for. My parents read aloud to me every night and books became my ticket to adventure. I was incredibly shy and I found communicating through the written word far easier than through face-to-face discourse. I made up stories. I embellished the truth, always adding more conflict, more color, more flare. I was accused of being a bookworm, a daydreamer, a drama queen, a liar.
The more I read, the more I wanted to write. Books ignited a longing in me that nothing else could quench. Tom Sawyer and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Trixie Beldon. The Bobsey Twins and The Yearling and Queenie Peavy. Harriet the Spy and A Wrinkle in Time and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I was deeply, madly in love with books. As the oldest of five siblings I was often called to help with the housework. I would prop my book in the kitchen window, wash a dish, turn a page, wash another dish, and turn another page. Okay, so the books got a little soggy and the dishwashing might have been a bit sloppy but I’d managed to squeeze in one more story.
Then the time came when I ached to create books of my own. I kept long angsty journals. I wrote on the walls in my closet and on the slates under my bed. During class I pretended to take notes when I was actually writing stories. Whenever I tossed a coin into a wishing well I had but one mantra. Let me be a writer. Whenever I blew out the candles on my birthday cake I never wished for ponies or pretty dresses or boyfriends. Let me be a writer. Whenever I saw a falling star one thought would flash through my brain. Let me be a writer.
And somewhere along the way, all that reading and wishing and writing converged and I became the very thing I’d dreamed of becoming. So now, each day when I turn on my computer, I take a deep, grateful breath and softly whisper, “You’re a writer” and that’s inspiration enough for me.
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