Look
I was read to in the cradle. By the time I was three, I had a stack of "Little Golden Books" as tall as myself; I remember Sambo and Hans Brinker and a host of international dolls on parade in those books. At six I read to the others in my kindergarten class and my first novel was "The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore", followed, at nine by "The Wizard of Oz".
I can't pick one that brought me to words, but the creation of my own words started, one night, in First grade. To that point, I had become proficient at the recognition of printed words and sounds, but hadn't really locked onto the most basic part of word formation.
That day, I had a list of spelling words as homework, one of which was L-O-O-K. Lying in bed, I sleepily mumbled to myself, "Look, L-O-O-K, look." Suddenly, it was a word; a word I had made, myself, from independent letters.
It opened a world of creativity for me and I've never stopped being amazed by it. My watch words could be "when in doubt, LOOK."
Or just "LOOK"!