A story that made me want to be a writer?

Part of me wants to say that it was something intense like A Canticle for Liebowitz, a classic murder mystery like And Then There Were None, or a perennial favorite like Persuasion, but that’s just not accurate. The book I have to credit for feeding the writing itch is Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted. 8-10-year-old me read that book so many times that the spine is falling off and the pages are marked with crumbs and orange juice stains. I had to buy my daughter her own copy because I didn’t think mine would survive a reading by enthusiastic little hands.

I was a shy, awkward kid and had a hard time standing up for myself, so Ella’s feisty confidence in the face of a literal curse was everything I wanted to be but wasn’t.

Is it a kids’ book? Yes, absolutely. But it’s a book that shaped some of my most ungainly formative years and made me want to tell stories like that - the kinds of stories that could be at once entertaining, funny, poignant, exciting, beautiful, and incisive.

It’s a work in progress, but I’m trying. 😅

Scoot E.B. Howard S. L. Linton J. M. Allen - Apologies if you’ve already done this! I’m trying to cut down on screen time, so I’m a bit out of the Notes loop.