Kiddalee's Writer's Autobiography

  I learned to read between the ages of four and six, as do a lot of people. In first grade, books (besides the ones my mom got me) became more accessable to me than ever before. I fell in love with reading. And somehow my first grade teacher got it into me that I could make books, too. I've wanted to be a writer since then (I used the term 'author' when I was little because it sounded cooler to me than 'writer').
  Since most of the stories my mom read me were the old fairy tales illustrated with absolutely beautiful paintings, the genre that seemed most natural to me was fantasy. There are many visual memories stuck inside me as well: the beautiful unicorns in the movie Legend, which I saw when I was too young to understand the plot; the bright sun sparkling through a white birch tree covered by an ice storm the night before; the fantastic characters of overly cute '80s cartoons like Rainbow Brite (especially the rainbow coloured horse, Starlite).
  When I became old enough to read novels I quickly discovered Bruce Coville's Sci-Fi and later, CS Lewis's Narnia. Those are the major literary influences of my childhood; I could name lesser ones but the list would go on for too long.
  I went through many periods of depression and famliy problems in my life, aside from thinking very little about the future. When I got to high school I fell into a 'reader's block' in which I was no longer an avid reader despite enjoying writing. Still, I soon began thinking that making a decent living from writing was unrealistic, so I began looking into other areas of work.
  To my despair, the only jobs I discovered in my preferred field (the humanities) were either impractical, required more hours of work than I was willing to put in, or did not seem enjoyable. It was only a matter of time before I got sick of putting my possibilities (or my life) in a box.
  Speaking to a successful playwright and theatre director, and reading some articles by and for writers gave me a real idea of what the job would be like. I don't think I truly made the decision before learning what I would be getting into. With new found knowledge about the writing lifestyle, I finally made the decision I thought I'd made as a child. But the love of writing came out of my childhood. I've wanted to be a writer since my first grade teacher told me that I could make books too, so I'm going to be a writer.

Cut from my Elfwood page http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/~vickisue

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Should I have a new bio in progress? I was inspired to write one, but that was several days ago :-\