What Book Made You Want to Be A Writer?

There was never a set moment. But when I was ten/eleven I read His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. That changed everything. I was so young, but I understood the books and what was behind them. Most of all, I loved how creative they were. Nothing was discounted in that trilogy, and it still kept a realistic feel. The ending of The Amber Spyglass tore me apart, at eleven.

Harry Potter.

Totes def.

Ah, there wasn't a book that specifically got me into writing. I have been writing since I was five or six, and that was long before I had ever read a longer book than some child stories. Unless one of those got me into it, but I don't remember. I'd say what fully got me into writing longer stories than short things, though, was a book called Measle and the Dragodon. (I think that was the title, if I got it right. I never can find that book anywhere. Anywhere. Sometimes I think I just imagined it.)

Twilight.
Immediately after it, I discovered the Twilight FF community on FF.net.
Then I started writing it.
*sigh*

Well, if we go back to the beginning...it would have to be the first book I ever truly knew how to read and that was Curious George flies a kite. I was obsessed with that book when I was little. I just loved the fact that I could read it and not struggle. When I learned to write, I started writing stories based off of that little monkey. When I look back that's really where my writing destiny began.

I didn't particularly want to be a writer until a few years ago; the idea of writing a novel or even a short story was almost daunting to me. But I was trying to find out what I was good at and I concluded two things; I could sing and I could write. Basically I had a voice and I wanted to use it one way or another. So for a while, I toyed with the idea of writing something but I had some pretty terrible ideas. It was then that I read 'Handle With Care' by Jodi Picoult and was completely overwhelmed and excited that someone had written something so incredible. That novel gave me a sense of drama and reality that I wanted to put in my writing, and the air of romance came from 'The Last Song' by Nicholas Sparks.

Well, the first ever story I wrote (that wasn't part of the school curriculum) was a Draco Malfoy fanfic, so I'd say it was the influence of JK Rowling that inspired me. At eleven, I thought HP was amazing of course, but I didn't fully appreciate her as an author and her writings until I was older. She still inspires me though, her life story and her love for writing is so evident in interviews I've seen of her.

When it comes to romance, I was also taken by The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants series. That is probably in my top five series to date, the way that Ann Brashares captures the friendship and romance and heartbreak of the four girls is just beautiful. Every time I read the series, I always tear up at the same moments. Every time. I want to write a romance not necessarily the same as the one in that series, but with my own twist on it. I love Brashare's writing in general.

Into the Land of Unicorns by Bruce Coville. I read it, I loved it and I started writing. But not about unicorns though.

When I was little I found myself fantasizing about doing anything that I saw other people doing, so I thought writing was just one of those things at first.

Starring Sally J. Freedman as herself was my favorite book as a kid and it's what truly made me fall in love with literature. But I think what made me really want to write was a book called Utterly Me, Clarice Bean by Lauren Child. For some reason the voice of the narrator just sounded so interesting to me that I wanted to come up with words like that. Lauren Child is from Manchester, England and the words she used in the book were very British. When I was a kid I was a total Anglophile so I really liked that. It's weird because now a lot of my favorite bands are Mancunian.

the dark elf trilogy by r.a.salvatore

Hm, The Great Gatsby. I wanted to create really tragic characters who were beautiful and damned like Fitzgerald seemed to have been born to do.
Then I read The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford and thought that nothing I said could compare.
So I write essays on like... factual things. Yep.

@ Blood_Raven
i read this book too and it was AMAZING! such a small and unknown book its awesome to see where it went :)

Oh, it was the Harry Potter series, for sure. I might've started with My Chemical Romance fan-fiction, but the HP fandom definitely made me hone my writing skills and encouraged me to work on it. It was also the first thing I started publicly posting.

Either Bridge to Terabithia or Because of Winn-Dixie. I read both of those stories at important times of my childhood, and they've always stuck with me. The Junie B. Jones series has also influenced the "humor" that I wanted to get across in my writing, too.

I think it was The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien which ultimately made me want to become a writer.

It was a combination of the Final Friends trilogy and See You Later by Christopher Pike for me. When I started writing, the first thing I wrote, I was reading nothing but Christopher Pike and I remember those books standing out the most to me.

aubs:

Look For Me By Moonlight by Mary Downin Hahn

I would say that this is the book that really got me into writing when I was younger, but I think the book that made me really want and love to write would have to be East by Edith Pattou. Or you could also say that any book by Karen Witemeyer made me seriously want to write historical romance novels.

I don't think a particular book made me think 'this is what I want to do', but I think just reading so many wonderful, well-written stories inspired me to start telling stories of my own.

There wasn't any particular book.

My elementary school teachers praised me for my creative writing. I was a shy kid, so the attention and praise I got for my work was addicting.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince helped me discover fanfiction, then I started writing fanfiction, then I began to realize the wall between fanfiction and original fiction isn't all that solid