On Literature and Writing

*I wrote most of this for a submission in my Autobiography class in graduate school. However, I have since added to it because it was written three years ago. And the bookshelf above doesn’t even hold all of our books. I have a cedar bookshelf my late Papa made me and it’s filled to the brim. Warning: this post is way long…

For as long as I can remember, I have been reading books. I began reading books by sitting in my mother’s or grandmother’s lap, as she filled my mind with wonderful stories. My Mammaw Peg read books to me, such as A Fly Went By, The Berenstein Bears and the Honey Tree, and the ever-popular The Cat in the Hat. My mother read to me one of her childhood favorites, Peeky Beeky, as well as the Sweet Pickles series and Mother Goose’s fairy tales. I also had the Disney A-Z Series.

As I got older and began to read on my own, I developed a taste for condensed classics, like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I also loved Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series (and I still have my old paperback collection). Whenever my school had a book fair, I wanted to buy books, but many times I could not for lack of money. My mother always tried to let me order at least one book when my teacher periodically sent home book catalogs. She always took me to the county library and made sure I had plenty to read. During summers, I did not like to go outside and play; I preferred to stay in my room reading. This might be the reason that I am unathletic and clumsy! All of the men on my father’s side of the family were extremely athletic in their youth, but I inherited none of it. I inherited the artistic and creative qualities of my mother’s side of the family and my Mammaw’s (Dad’s mother) love of reading.

As I got closer to my pre-teen years, I enjoyed reading Sweet Valley Twins, Sweet Valley High, and The Baby-sitters Club series. These books were very interesting to me because they told stories of girls close to my age or a little older than me. I also loved the old hardback Nancy Drew series – they began my love of mystery and suspense (Mom actually bought me four of the old series one year for Christmas not too long ago). I found these books so intriguing that I could read each in one afternoon. Mom began working at the county library when I was in junior high school, so I had plenty of access to books.

I have also been writing in journals for years and years. I began documenting my daily activities in a mint green diary that had a lock on it (I still have it but I’m too scared to read what’s in it!). I kept my most personal thoughts and sometimes wrote cheesy childhood poetry. Gradually, I developed more mature thoughts and writings and advanced to blank journals without locks. At one point in my life, I even wrote out my daily prayers on paper. Today, writing a blog is all the rage and I enjoy keeping my family and friends updated on this very blog. I’m addicted to it. For me, writing seems to flow more fluidly than impromptu speech, words, or ideas.

As I moved into high school, I had extra-curricular activities such as band, majorette line, and piano lessons, so I did not really read much unless it was required for school. When I was a junior in high school, my school developed an advanced placement English class in which I was asked to join. The students in this class were the teacher’s guinea pigs, but most of us enjoyed the class (except Leslie–haha, who knew you would become an English teacher?). My high school was extremely small – the town’s population was only approximately 1,200 citizens – so we did not always have the best resources and text books for class. However, this new English class really expanded our knowledge and reading lists. We read Hemingway, Faulkner, Austen, the Brontë sisters, Steinbeck, and many others. We learned how to write an effective essay as well as a major research paper.

I continued in the advanced placement class my senior year. We read some Shakespeare and some more modern pieces like Lord of the Flies, Things Fall Apart, A Separate Peace, and Heart of Darkness. I don’t remember at what point we read the short story “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, but I LOVED it and still do. We also performed a small melodrama titled, “Egad! What a Cad!” I played the heroine, Constant Hope, who has lost her memory in a train wreck and is almost swindled by Mr. Bertram Oleander until the hero, Manly Rash (yeah, you read that correctly), figures things out. It was a silly, ridiculous story, but we exaggerated just how melodramatic it was by having an intermission that included a barbershop quartet, a magic show, and a flapper dance routine by the school’s band director. The play was tough to memorize, but it was great fun and we were asked to give two encore performances the day after we originally performed.

For my big senior research paper, I decided to research Tennessee Williams – what a tragic genius! His life story just amazed me and I began to truly understand how someone’s life and background can greatly influence their writings. Learning about Williams really opened my eyes and mind to a world outside of my small, rural town. Today, Williams does not cease to amaze me in his works, even after his death. My junior and senior years of English completely influenced my decision to pursue writing as a career. I am so fortunate to have had a wonderful teacher like Mrs. Martin, because she absolutely affected my career path.

When I entered college in 1997, I thought I wanted to major in business since I had worked at a bank throughout high school. I soon found out that there is no creativity in business, which truly bothered me (that, and the fact that I barely passed Math Analysis for Business Decisions and Microeconomics). When I finally decided to switch my major to English, it was as if everything fell into place. I began taking classes that I actually liked and was interested in, and the readings were not as tough to digest as some of the accounting and economics texts that I had been required to read. My favorite literature class was Literature of the American South. There are so many excellent Southern writers: Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, Kate Chopin, Flannery O’Connor, Willa Cather, and William Faulkner, just to name a few. This class was so much fun and I could really relate to some of the stories, since they were set in the South.

My senior year at my undergraduate university, I decided to take Technical Writing. I loved the class and realized that I could make a career out of technical writing. Originally, I had not planned to go to graduate school, but as graduation neared, I began to stress about what sort of career I would be able to find. I had no writing experience, other than in-class assignments and research papers. I had also dropped the educational option of my degree my junior year after I panicked during a peer teaching session. Around December of my senior year, I decided to apply to the Master of Arts in Technical and Expository Writing program at a local university, which meant I had to make a mad dash to take the Graduate Retention Exam, get my recommendation letters, and edit my entry essays by March 15. I was completely stressed out by Spring Break of 2001, but obviously, I was accepted and valued my time there.

My education has definitely been a vital force in my growth as a person. I am extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to receive an education, since many people are unable to attend due to financial reasons. I am doubly blessed to have been able to attend graduate school. I am extremely grateful to my parents and grandparents for being so supportive in my education and for encouraging me daily in my studies.

Three years later, I work full time and it’s not always easy to find the time to read. However, I’m working on it. When MK and I got married, I inherited a LOT of books. I already had more than a bookshelf’s worth and he added to my collection. He also got me interested in science-fiction. We own 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Brave New World (although I’d classify these as dystopic rather than sci-fi). I wanted to take Contemporary Literature while getting my BA, but the teacher was a nut-case and I really didn’t want to deal with him any more than I had to already. I regret never having read these books. I’ve started on Brave New World, but it’s pretty slow-going. I’ve read two chapters so far and I’m on hiatus. I am now reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and I just received The Problem of Pain also by him which I look forward to reading. He’s really deep, but his chapters are short, so I don’t anticipate it taking long to get through his books.

I own a ton of Jane Austen books as well. When I went to London in 2000, we visited the town of Bath where Austen once lived. In their gift shoppe, they had her books for sale (the Penguin Press collection). The other kids on the tour and I raided the bookshelves and bought just about all of the paperbacks. So, I have a fairly nice collection of Jane Austen. One of my favorite movies is Emma, but I’ve never read the book. The movie is hilarious and I think it’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s finest role ever, even though I’m not a big fan of hers.

I bought MK most of the Dune collection and he’s reading the last book (there are six in the original series). Some of his favorite books are the Lord of the Rings trilogy and he enjoys the Dune series although he tells me they are very, very weird.

We also own a lot of books on Christianity. We own a whole smorgasboard of those…mainly from MK’s collection. I didn’t own a whole lot when we got married but I enjoy reading them. I’m not big on Christian fiction, but some of it is okay. Frank Peretti writes some interesting books (The Visitation was made into a movie staring Edward Furlong and it wasn’t too bad) but I haven’t gotten to any of those either.

So, as you can see, I love books. It is rare for me to go into a book store and come out empty-handed; it’s like an addiction or something. Any sense of reason weakens as soon as I walk into a Barnes and Noble. But lately, I’ve been getting my books for free on Bookmooch.com (I just wish someone would mooch off of me so I could get more points!). My favorite collectible books are those that are hard-cover and leather-bound. I only have three of those, but they are some of my prized possessions (The Brontë Sisters: Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe [one of my faves], William Shakespeare: The Complete Works). I also kept my all of my Longman Anthologies from my literature classes.

I have a feeling our kids are going to think we are the dorkiest parents ever…either that or they’ll be VERY smart. I’m hoping the latter but anticipating the former.

I hope you enjoyed this post.

P.S. If you’re interested in what all books MK and I own, you can go to my LibraryThing catalog and check it out. Again, I haven’t listed everything, but a lot are on there.