A story that made me want to be a writer?

I usually answer this question by saying The Lord of the Rings, because after reading that age twelve, I decided I was going to be a fantasy writer. But I’ve been thinking about this lately and I don’t think this is necessarily true, because I wrote stories way before I read LotR, and I think that the desire to be a writer was always there, I just never articulated it until then.

If I go all the way back, I think it was Quest For Camelot. I was obsessed with it when it came out. I had the Kayley doll. I acted out scenes from the movie. It definitely started my obsession with King Arthur. And I think that’s about the same time I started my ongoing ‘tell myself a bedtime story’ thing, where I would continue on every night from where I’d left off the previous night, until I fell asleep. (I still do this. This is how I plot my books.)

I told my mom about my ongoing bedtime story one day, and she suggested I write it down so I wouldn’t forget it. I was quite sure I never would (and to this day, I remember…it starred a princess named Meredith who had the ability to talk to animals, and she was also training to be a knight.) But I started writing other stories down, ones that I didn’t tell myself every single night.

So…really, if you look at it, it’s my mom’s fault that I started writing.