5 ways my mom made me a writer

Although my mom isn’t a writer, I owe a lot to her for making me one. She did this in five big ways:

She read to us

My mom reads like a fiend and she read to us all the time when we were little. Narnia, The Hobbit, The Just So Stories, A Wrinkle In Time, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and countless others. She taught us to love stories – I can still remember how excited I was when I got into first grade and found out I was going to learn to read for myself.

She took us to the library

Every two weeks in the summer, she’d drive us to the library – not the tiny one up the street, but the big one that was a little farther off. I’d make a b-line for the YA section and grab anything that looked interesting, and take home a whole stack of books I could only hope would last me two weeks.

She home-schooled us

Most kids spend six hours a day in class and still have homework in the evening. They’re so busy cramming their heads with facts, they don’t have time to experiment with hobbies and figure out what they really want to do. When you’re home-schooled, you have a certain amount of work to do per day or week, and once you’re done with it, you’re free. On a good day, I could get everything done bynoon.

 

She made us amuse ourselves

You’d think with all that free time, we’d get bored. Well, sometimes we did. But every time we complained to Mom about it, she would say “You could always clean out the garage” or something to that effect, which meant we quickly learned not to depend on her for entertainment. Instead, we learned to amuse ourselves – which naturally lead to reading, which itself naturally led to writing (for two out of three of us).

 

She never told us we couldn’t

Although we understood that we had to lead productive lives and make real money, neither she nor my dad ever told us we couldn’t become writers (or a singer, which was what I wanted to be for most of my childhood). However, we also didn’t ask them to spend vast amounts of money to feed our hobbies; we didn’t ask them to buy us fancy computers or send us to expensive writer’s camps. I guess the message behind that is, if your kid really wants to do it, he’ll find a way with or without a big stack of money.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Inspiration Monday X

Whew! More submissions than ever this week – 28! It also happens to be the tenth InMon, and we are well over 100 submissions total. Seems like we should have some kind of anniversary celebration. Happy InMon to us, happy InMon to us! Click the links, they are genius. Happy InMon to us!

Woah. Unintentional rhyme!

Kay

Carl

Mike and two and three and four

Sonia

Marantha and two and three 

Drew

Janel

Billie Joe

Patti

Char and two

Jinx

Mark

Scribbla

Rebekah

Indigo Spider and two

Fredi and two

Jenna

Debra

BlueSkyPoet

Barb

The Rules

There are none. Read the prompts, get inspired, write something. No word count minimum or maximum. You don’t have to include the exact prompt in your piece, and you can interpret the prompt(s) any way you like.

OR

No really; I need rules!

Okay; write 200-500 words on the prompt of your choice. You may either use the prompt as the title of your piece or work it into the body of your piece. You must complete it before6 pm CSTon the Monday following this post.

The Prompts:

A man with no fingerprints

The day the earth stood still*

Atlas shrugged*

The other me

Things only children know

 

If you want to share your Inspiration Monday piece, post it on your blog and link back to today’s post; I’ll include a link to your piece in the next Inspiration Monday post. No blog? Email your piece to me at stephanie (at) balcomagency (dot) com.

Happy writing!

*Obviously, these are titles from famous works. I wasn’t impressed by either film version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and I’ve never read Atlas Shrugged, but both phrases fascinate me, and I’m eager to see what you guys do with them. Have at it!