Re: New Thread--Who Inspired You

**"* M* <c*@ns.sympatico.ca>**

Doreen - what a wonderful story of your inspiration. I also love John Steinbeck's writing, I wrote a paper on him in university and learned so much about him and life doing the research.

I was a reader right from the beginning, and still today my idea of a perfect retreat is reading a book in front of the fire or out in the garden. The spark that made me want to write was a book I read when I was fourteen called "Beverley Gray's Career". Now in 1964 the idea of a girl having a career was still a bit of a novelty - at least where I grew up - and Beverley Gray was a newspaper reporter. I held that dream inside until my children were grown and then I figured it was now or never and in 1997 I became a freelance writer, writing first for newspapers and then magazines. Because I started so late I decided I wanted to write about things I loved and that meant gardening - so here I am. I hope to try fiction next.

I'm looking forward to reading other's stories - thanks for the idea Doreen!
Carol

Carol Matthews
Truro, Nova Scotia
Columnist for Canadian Gardening, East Coast Living, European Reporter
Author of Frommer's Halifax city guide
Halifax City Expert for www.homeandabroad.com
Board Member of The Travel Media Association of Canada (www.travelmedia.ca)
and The Garden Writers Association (www.gwaa.org)

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Doreen Howard 
  To: gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org 
  Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 6:58 PM
  Subject: [GWL] New Thread--Who Inspired You

  We've had a wonderful discussion during the last weeks about business plans and business side of garden communications.  Thank you everyone.  I learned much.

  Now to the creative side.  Who or what inspired you to write, speak or perform?  From where did the spark or epiphany come?

  In my case, it was John Steinbeck.  He wrote so vividly about the Monterrey Bay and Salinas areas of California that it awoke my latent writing ability.  It was easy to mimic him by writing descriptive narratives.  In my case, at 16, I wrote about the towering Ponderosa pines that grew around our family home that backed up to Angeles Crest National Forest.  And, I wrote about my fantasies...growing flowers, cutting them, arranging them.  My Dad was strictly a vegetable, grass and flowering shrub guy, and my mother never gardened.  But, I loved flowers.  So I fanaticized on paper.  Next thing I knew, I was elected editor of the high school newspaper and my writing career was launched.  

  When I was 25, I talked my new husband into taking a trip up the coast to Monterrey Bay so I could see where Steinbeck's characters in Cannery Row and Sweet Tuesday lived.  The commercialization of the area hadn't taken place yet.  We spent the night in Pacific Grove in a hotel where we could hear the lighthouse fog horn and see the ocean lap against the shore, I retraced the steps over the railroad tracks, past the rusted cannery pipes to the chicken coop Mack and the boys called home.  I spent hours that night in the hotel writing my thoughts down in a journal.  My new husband was less than thrilled, but I couldn't stop writing.

  There is only one other writer who has moved me as much as Steinbeck.  James Lee Burke writes of the Louisiana bayous with such passion that you can easily look past the violence in his characters.  His narratives make you cry, because they are so vivid and touching.  He's influencing my latest writing for the web.

  I'm done telling my story.  Tell us yours.
  Doreen Howard
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_______________________________________________
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GWL has searchable archives at:
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at: http://www.hort.net/lists/gwlphotos

Post gardening questions/threads to
&quot;Gardenwriters on Gardening&quot; &lt;gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org&gt;

For GWL website and Wiki, go to
http://www.ibiblio.org/gardenwriters