A story that made me want to be a writer?

See this is a tough question because I can’t actually trace the origin point. I have always written, I have always felt I communicated better in writing.

But the more I think on it, I think a major moment for me was reading The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury in 6th grade. The stories that particularly stick in my mind are Kaleidoscope and The Veldt. I spent a lot of time studying Kaleidoscope, which for some reason just shattered my little brain.

I think what I liked about it was how much happened with so little action. Ray Bradbury was a master of the subtle touch, and I don’t know, something about it just appealed to me. It would be years before the desire to write would fully mature. I never treated my desire to write as a serious endeavor until I started writing on substack. I was occasionally encouraged by people who liked little snippets of things I’d written, but it took substack to actually open the gates and let me actually do it on purpose.

There are lots of influential books but looking back as far as I can, only the Illustrated Man sticks out as the biggest and earliest turning point.