Photo by Lisa Trenary/Freelance Nicholas Sparks speaks at UT Tyler Thursday.

Best-selling author and master love storyteller Nicholas Sparks entertained the crowd during The University of Texas at Tyler Distinguished Lecture Series on Thursday with moving accounts of how family has inspired his novels and humorous recollections of how he started.

Sparks, who has written 17 critically acclaimed books, also spoke during a student seminar.

Recalling how his writing career began, Sparks said he did not grow up thinking he would be a writer. Instead, Sparks planned to be a lawyer and he first tried his hand at writing a novel in college after a foot injury prevented him from pursuing his passion — running.

After his mother told him to stop pouting and do something, Sparks said he wrote his first novel, which he described as drivel. Still, Sparks said, “I learned I could finish a novel and a part of me enjoys coming up with stories and writing them.”

Sparks said he spent several years in assorted jobs: he waited tables, sold real estate and dental products, started and failed in two businesses and sold pharmaceutics. He married, bought a house and had children.

In a life-changing moment at age 28, Sparks said he decided to try to write another novel and “really try to make it as good as I possibly can.”

He wrote “The Notebook,” for which he received a $1 million preemptive offer and it was made into a movie.

His mother falling off a horse, having a cerebral hemorrhage and dying at age 47 inspired the novel “Message in a Bottle.”

His sister, whose dream was to get married and who developed cancer and died, inspired his third novel, “A Walk to Remember.”

His novels are full of love and sadness because sadness and tragedy are a part of everyone’s life, Sparks said.

Sparks told students that he finds the entire process of writing a novel challenging because a writer has to be creative and there are an infinite number of choices in every step of a novel.

“Whatever it is you write has to be original and you (the reader) can never have read it before,” Sparks said.

Sparks said he dislikes writing, which caused a ripple of laughter, but he added he does it because “I love seeing if I can do it.”

He added. “The purpose of what I do is to move you through all the emotions of life so that by the time you close the book, you will feel that you have lived all of those emotions.”