Childhood writer

Fiction writers often have difficulty blogging.  The big question comes down to--What can I possibly blog about?
The thoughts behind it are simple; I write fiction, and so my safety net is to tell a story that I've spun myself in my head--but how long will anyone want to read a blog that is solely short stories or chapter excerpts?

With this in mind, I went where any new blogger should go--Google.  I asked the Great and Powerful Google what a fiction writer should blog about.  As would be expected of the Wonder Site, it gave me several ideas that have gotten me here.  (http://publicityhound.net/fiction-authors-blog-about-these-19-topics/.)

And so, today I start by blogging adventure with where my story begins.  The question at hand is this:
 "What one event in your childhood had the greatest effect on your writing career?"

 My mind immediately scatters to a million different spaces devoted to this very subject inside my skull--learning to read at a young age; devouring books because I needed them to breathe; listening to the stories of older children told to them by their parents; realizing for the first time that when I told a story people listened.

That final one (accompanied by its immediate predecessor) is, I think, where my Story began.

When I was a little girl, my mom was the neighborhood sitter.  She watched all of the children while their parents were at work.  That meant I grew up around an array of children from ages 3 to about 12, maybe older, but I hardly remember their ages.  What I do remember, is the way my sister (5 years my senior) would tell us  stories.  Jokes, mostly, were the favor of the group as they made us laugh; these weren't ordinary jokes--they weren't "knock knock"s or "Dumb blonde" jokes.  They were stories that unfolded, with funny morals at the end that seemed to make no sense, which was why they were funny.

When I started school, I took those stories with me.  We moved to a different part of town when I was only in the first grade, and shy, as I was, I actually made a few good friends.

What I noticed about these friends were the way they would listen to me when I told them the stories my sister had told me.  Eventually I would tell my own stories--I would tell them my dreams from the night before if they were funny; anecdotes that happened in my house; adventures I had been on with my cousins and siblings--ANYTHING that came to mind.

And they listened.

I grew to hunger for those moments--I loved the feeling of seeing their faces light up or fall in the appropriate places when I told them true stories--even more when I told them ones that I'd made up, just for them.

I never stopped telling stories.  Nowadays, when I have a friend that is busy and not texting me back I tell them a story.  I send them a series of texts that consist of a story just for them.  I recently wrote a short story adaptation of "The Princess and the Pea" (named The Prince and the Pea) after a friend of mine shared that he never liked peas, in fact he sincerely hated them.
I've written short stories for Facebook, stories for my niece, and two books that I hope one day will be published (it's actually three books, but the third is not yet written).

I love to tell stories.  Would you like to hear one?