My Mom Made Me Read Too Many Books And Now She's Made Me Write One Too

Where my first novel came from and why it's good for your mom to make you read books

When I started in first grade they did a reading and language assessment and assigned people to “reading groups” based on skill level.

I was placed in the last group.

Language itself was never easy for me. I often struggled in grammar, with diagramming sentences, and with remembering the rules. In many ways I was set up to be a kid who didn’t read much, if at all.

But my mom changed all that.

She gave me three gifts that I’ll always be grateful for:

The Gift of Long Unfilled Afternoons

My parents refused to buy me a Nintendo. Mom limited my afternoon cartoons (but I still got to watch Talespin). And while I was always in a sport of some kind I often found myself in the afternoons, with nothing in particular to do. My youngest sibling was five years younger than me, so for a while I didn’t have someone to play with either. The end result was that I had long, lazy, unstructured afternoons on many days.

This was a gift.

It forced me to use the same plastic Army Men and LEGO ships but to keep it interesting I had to create new stories, new scenarios, new conflicts. It forced me to get outside and imagine what secrets the old willow tree in our backyard could be hiding. It forced me into the world of imagination.

The Gift of Full Bookshelves

My school curriculum was a classical education curriculum so I read lots of good old books and Greek mythology and grew up unintimidated by old language. But beyond my schoolwork my mom always ensured I had quality books, and lots of them. Usually they were the classics. I remember tracing the treacherous journey of the Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I remember journeying into unknown jungles or prehistoric beasts with The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I remember near misses and escapes in the south with Tom Sawyer. All this literature couldn’t have been cheap but she never refused to buy me a book. And she probably hated my books being left all over the house.

I now realize what a remarkable thing that was. My mom bought a few contemporary books but mostly she kept my shelves stocked with old books. She refused to believe I couldn’t read Treasure Island for myself as a young kid. So I did. And the books she gave me were full of courage, and wonder, and mystery, with surprising insights about the way life worked, and surprisingly adult observations on science and mortality and power. Eventually, I did start to get the grammar, but not from rote memorization. Instead, I eventually developed an instinct about it from reading so much. Things felt right or wrong because I read so much even if I couldn’t explain it.

The Gift of Being Pushed

When I began learning to write I remember vividly that she pushed me to use another adjective or adverb. I’d write “The lake was big” and she’d say “how big?” or “what kind of lake?” or “what color was the water?” I remember being frustrated. It was, after all, just a big lake. But she helped me realize that I could make the lake sharper and more vivid in my head. And then I needed to help the reader see the same cold, clear lake, surrounded by pine trees, lit by a fading sunset, that I did. She pushed me to write more, and more clearly, so that I could bring people to what I saw.

She sent me to a writing workshop with a published author as a kid. I remember we were supposed to present our ideas to this author if he called on us. And he actually did call on me. But I was too shy and stumbling with my words to really say anything. My more articulate friend jumped in instead.

But she kept encouraging me and sent me to another writing workshop for students. And at this writing workshop the teacher pulled my mom and I aside at the end and said, “He has a gift for this and he needs to keep writing.” And my mom wasn’t surprised. It was what she knew all along. That’s why she pushed me to be better.

The End Result

This year I wrote my first full novel draft and I’m about to start releasing it in weekly dispatches online. But that kid in first grade, in the last reading group, would never have done that on his own. Instead, I think it was my mom who created a reader and a writer. Maybe it was always in there and she could see it. Maybe it grew along the way. But I really have her to thank for it.

In the end, she made me write this book. She expanded my imagination so much that I can’t see a storm rolling in without thinking of a story perfect for a stormy night. She pushed me to be able to bring readers into that storm with me. Now, reading and writing are not something I can do when I feel like it. They are something I have to do.

It is her fault I wrote a book, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Now as a parent I know not every kid will grow up to be a writer but I want to give my kids these same three gifts:

-The gift of unscripted time to use their imaginations

-The gift of full bookshelves with good books

-The gift of “make it more vivid and bring us there too”

And I never want to complain when they leave books all over the house. (And they do.)