Childhood Book Influences

I read an article this week about what childhood books influenced a writer. So that got me thinking about what books I read as a child and how they influenced me.

I voraciously read animal books, particularly horse books. I owned the entire Black Stallion series and read them over and over. I read almost all the Jim Kjelgaard books, as well as the Marguerite Henry books. A childhood dream came true for me when I lived in Chincoteague for 8 months and not only visited the Misty museum, but saw the famous Pony Swim.

Yet, I do not write animal books. You will see horses appear in most of my books, and the occasional dog, but they are not my focus.

I also read–and reread—The Chronicles of Narnia, which definitely seeded my love of fantasy.  I was fascinated by the idea of magic portals, of the interconnection of everything seen and unseen. Many of my books deal with magic and the ripple effects each of our actions cause.

But perhaps the biggest influence on my writing was Madeleine L’Engle. I read her Time Trilogy until the covers got tattered. Although most people know the first book in the series, A Wrinkle In Time, my favorite was the third, A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

It stars my favorite character, Charles Wallace, who had to find and reverse the one event that would change history to prevent nuclear war, and it has a time-traveling unicorn. How could I not love it?

I see a lot of the themes in L’Engle’s writing coming through in my own. The intersection of magic and mystery with everyday. The connection of everything, everywhere. The understanding that love gives you more strength than hate. That being true to yourself and what you believe in is the most powerful magic of all.

Those are some of the influences on me. Who are some of your childhood favorites that shaped your writing and your worldview?

Pony Penning

Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague did more for the island of Chincoteague than any planned publicity campaign could have. Written in 1947, the book painted such an enthralling picture of life on Chincoteague and neighboring Assateague that millions of people since then have travelled to the islands to experience it for themselves. That Chincoteague’s economy is almost wholly tourism-based is a direct result of this one little children’s book and the dreams it inspired in generations of readers. And the thing that most tourists come to see is the Pony Swim.

Assateague Island is a National Park. Its main attractions are the beach and the wild ponies. Come Pony Penning time (the last Wednesday in July), the ponies rule all. The wild ponies of Assateague roam semi-free (there are fences to keep them off the roads and public beaches) and once a year they are rounded up and swum across the channel to Chincoteague Island. There, a select number of foals are sold, with the proceeds benefiting the Chincoteague Fire Department, which owns the ponies.

So, once a year, thousands of people (they expected 40,000 this year) flock to tiny Chincoteague to see the ponies swim from Assateague to Chincoteague. Since I am living on Chincoteague this year, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to join the fun!

Six a.m. saw the sun, me, and my mother rise. Slathered with sunscreen and bug spray (Chincoteague mosquitoes have carried off small children and pets), we arrived at Pony Swim Lane, where the ponies make landfall. To get close to the landing site, we slogged through a marsh composed of sucking black mud and biting grasses. A fellow adventurer, apparently not warned against wearing flip flops, lost her shoe entirely. Another, although clad in sneakers, ended up fishing his shoe out of the muck. We gained the other side of the marsh with all shoes accounted for.

Then we waited. The sun got hot (but thankfully not too bad), and the only bugs that bothered us were the grasshoppers – particularly the one that leaped from a stalk onto my chest. He was like something from Alien – a huge black creepy thing that sprang at me and grew larger and larger in my view like a monster in a 3D movie. I returned him post-haste to the grass.

We arrived at 7 a.m. The ponies swam at noon. The crowd grew and grew, and we all shared stories of where we came from – Kansas, Pennsylvania, Norway. People lent helping hands to those who needed it, sharing water, towels and food with those who had arrived unprepared – or those unlucky enough to have taken a tumble in the mud. The comraderie reminded me of the many hours I had spent hanging around stage doors at Monkees concerts – a shared passion that for the moment surmounted any differences we might have.

Noon arrived, the warning flare went up, the crowd cheered, and the ponies were in the water! The crowd surged forward, pressing to see the horses swimming and the famed “saltwater cowboys” wrangling them across the channel, in between two lines of spectator boats. In a little over four minutes, the first pony made landfall. 50-plus mares, foals and stallions sorted themselves out and fell to eating, resting after the swim. The 85th Annual Pony Swim was over.

I am grateful to have experienced this wonderful event and to have seen the wild ponies up close. The reality lived up to the dreams conjured in Misty of Chincoteague (although I did not buy my own pony at the auction the next day). As a writer, I could not help but marvel at the power of story. As long as children keep reading that book, they will want to come see the ponies, and Chincoteague will reap the benefits. The Misty legacy lives on.

Setting As Muse

Everyone knows how important setting is in a book. But how important is setting when writing a book? For some writers, where they write is a huge part of their writing process, and can influence every facet of the book, from the feel to the setting details. While most writers can and do write wherever they happen to find themselves, many have favorite places they retreat to whenever they can.

 

I spend most of my writing time at home – face it, with an 8-month-old, there’s not a lot of choice. I write in dribs and drabs as she allows. But there are places in my life that inspire me to write, that seem to open the creative windows in my mind farther than I thought they could go.

 

One place is St. Michaels, Maryland. There is nothing like sitting on the balcony overlooking the Miles River, letting the quiet seep into me, letting the “real” world vanish. The warm breeze, the water lapping at the shore…peace. And fantastic stars over the water at night—even shooting stars at the right time of year. It’s a great place to hole up and get words on the page.

 

Another place is Chincoteague Island, Virginia. Some of you know that I have been spending about half of every month there for most of this year. Chincoteague is the site of Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague; Stormy, Misty’s Foal; and Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague, so there is literary history there. The island itself inspires writing. It is quiet and peaceful and slow-moving (except at Pony Penning!). The salt air blows ceaselessly across the land, bringing the scent of wildness and freedom from neighboring Assateague Island. But what I find inspiring is the town.

 

Most of Chincoteague is residential, houses on almost every square inch. Unlike the “developments” up north, though, it is not a cookie-cutter universe, with every house a replica of the one next door. Every house is as individual as the person who owns it. There’s the “just barely” two story house that is twice as long as it is tall. There’s the three story aristocrat towering over the 4-room cottage beside it. There the lavender-shuttered house with every blade of grass manicured confronting the weathered, shingle-challenged shack across the street. Every one different – and every one hinting at its own story.

 

Not only do these houses give me scads of ideas for settings, imagining what plots those walls conceal, but they free up my mind to work on quirky characters. The sameness I see in the north (big box stores, strip malls, cloned houses) stupefies the mind. On Chincoteague, where each house is a character unto itself, it is not hard to picture the characters who would have created a house like that. Peopling stories with colorful characters becomes easier.

 

Just for the record, I have also always found Ocean City, New Jersey, a good place to relax and write. I seem to have a water theme going, don’t I? So now I know where I need to buy my next house to maximize my writing potential – near water! Would buying such a house count as a business expense?

 

How about you? Where do you go to hear the Muse speak?

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