It’s the Monthly Blog Hop for the Insecure Writers Support Group founded by Alex J. Cavanaugh.
The first Wednesday of every month, an optional question is announced that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience, or even a story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post. Remember, the question optional. Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.
Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!
The awesome co-hosts for the June 4 posting of the IWSG are PJ Colando, Pat Garcia, Kim Lajevardi, Melisa Maygrove, and Jean Davis!
JUNE 4 QUESTION — What were some books that impacted you as a child or a young adult?
It was many and many a year ago
In a kingdom by the sea
That a maiden there lived
Whom you may know
As the writer Caron Leigh
Obviously this ditty is à la Poe's poem, Annabel Lee ...
And the maiden of course is me, Leigh Caron.
My kingdom as a kid was Long Island...
And the sea? The Atlantic.
Back then, my mother was an avid reader...
Our living room boasted two large built-in bookcases...
Filled with "illustrated" editions of the ‘classics’...
Dickens, Hawthorn, Homer, Chaucer, Tolstoy and more.
The illustrations in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein creeped me out.
But it was Poe’s poems and stories that grabbed my fascination...
And I started writing poetry at the age of 10.
THE NIGHTMARE OF THE OLD WINDMILL
Through a field and o’er a hill,
There I found an old windmill.
Deserted of course, I went inside,
Thirty feet long and twenty feet wide.
Would make a good hideout, don't you think?
A candle for light and a basin for a sink?
Out of the mill and down the hill,
Through the field I race.
Into the house and into my room,
With such a goodly pace.
To tell my pets, to tell my dolls,
On my bedroom shelf,
To tell my friends, Maggie and Joe,
And of course to tell myself.
Through the field and up the hill,
And into the old windmill,
There I find in the window
A head upon the sill.
It's coming closer and closer to me,
Above the head my mother I see.
Out of the mill and down the hill
Through the field I fall.
Now I hear the breakfast call.
The morning sun fell on my bed,
When I think of the dream, I dread.
Through the field and over the hill,
The nightmare of the old windmill.
My sister Christine was a sophomore in high school then...
And she entered it in a school contest under her name...
My mother, bless her heart, was complicit...
She added punctuation and corrected spelling errors.
My first reaction was to be mad at my sister for stealing it...
But hey! It won first place!
And that's when I knew...
I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.
So?
What books impacted you as a child or young adult?
Always,
Em-Musing