Monday, February 22, 2010

Read to Write, Right?

Anyone else a (water) closet reader? Books and magazines, of course, but I admit to soap labels, shampoo bottles, the DANGER tag on my blower dryer, those teeny papers that come with OTC medication. My eyes never stop searching for some letters to put together!

So as writers hoping to inspire a new generation, what did we read growing up?

Our house was full of books. Every noontime my mother accompanied the soup-and-sandwich-for-picky-eaters with a book: Little Golden Books, A.A. Milne, Ogden Nash, Robert Louis Stevenson. "Now eat one more bite and I'll read the next page..."

Once I could read on my own I was a fan of those turquoise bound biographies no one else ever checked out: Juliette Lowe, Clara Barton, Louisa May Alcott. Vacations were the only time we were allowed comic books, my mother figuring the quiet in the back seat was worth whatever dip in intellectual stimulation we were sure to experience! As peer pressure for Noticing the Opposite Sex increased, I read my way through the Romances of the Month, living vicariously through Sheri and Bobby as on the third date their "hands touched and his lips grazed her cheek." Swoon!

The only book I was inspired by in high school was The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

I keep meaning to write big heavy books about theological issues or Parish Life matters, but the lure of a creating a rhyming text about Bush Dancers in the Australian outback is calling me. What rhymes with wombat?

5 comments:

  1. I'm no help. The only thing that popped into my head was combat. I'm guessing that's not what you were looking for.

    Perhaps "anonymous" can be of more assistance. I think she has been writing some great poems of late.

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  2. The fact that you read literary works as a teen opposed to gangs of comic books (as I did) is clearly the reason why I write so elementary and your pen is something special.

    Still, I love to read and write myself.

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  3. Tomcat.

    The tomcat is in combat with the wombat. dancing, dancing in the austrailan outback.
    knicknack paddy whack give the cat a bone
    or a payday loan.

    Hehe! Okay, that is my last glass of wine.

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  4. haha, i think read those same biographies for book reports when i was in elementary! clara barton (nurse!), amelia earhart (pilot!), and then i think i actually had to dress up like a girl scout to present Juliette Lowe? nice rhymes from urania! don't forget about your counting/prairie poem either--i liked the potential for that one.

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  5. I can't wait to read about the bush dancers in the Australian Outback.

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