What did it for you - something someone said? Something someone did? A bad book? A wonderful book? A fluke? When did you feel that writing was what you wanted to do and have you ever wavered? If you have wavered, what brought you back? Just curious. It seems lately I'm questioning everything.
I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was about eight. I used to make up stories all the time but never thought to actually write them down. I took a English course at college and during our first assignment the tutor asked me to read out my story to the whole class (he thought it was that good!) - I was mortified and shied from doing it so he passed my story round for the class to read. It was at that point I know I could write. But what inevitably happens when you find your niche, life reared its head and takes you on a different path. Working for a living, so writing took a back seat. In my mid twenties I wanted to reinvest in my writing but didn't know what to write about and while I was pondering what genre to start on, life distracted me yet again and I started my family. My life is slower now, the kids are grown, work is less arduous and I have 'time' to write. Writing has always been 'there' but I haven't always been able to hear it calling me--life can be a distraction, but if you have no life you can't write. Live first then write. I use my life experiences all the time in my writing and I thnk my writing is better for it.
For awhile.......now. I at first didn't wanna always be a writer. Because I didn't used to read a lot. But I always made up stories while playing with my toys. I just didn't realize it. Then around 4th grade I started reading comics (still do). I made comics when I was that age to. I did it with some friends of mine but unfortunately a lot of what I made was really just rip offs. Then Unlce got me into reading straight up books. As I continued to read, watch and absorb all these things I found myself outgrowing playing with my toys. So when I was about 12 I completely just stopped with the toys and I didn't have anyway to convey my imagination. But then I realized......hey I can write! And so now I do. I pretty much just took a lot of the concepts and characters I had when I was younger and re did them to fit with my more mature way of thinking. So I work to hone my skill and make something out of my ideas. Because I'm not good at anything else but being a dreamer.
October, 1963. I was ten. My parents took me out of school for three weeks for a trip to England and Ireland (my father worked for Cunard Line and we sailed over on the Queen Mary - the one that is now a hotel in Long Beach - and came back on the Queen Elizabeth - the one that sank in Hong Kong harbor in 1971). I was given three weeks worth of school assignments, plus I was to write an essay describing my experiences. We traveled by ship from New York to Southampton, took the boat train to London, another train to Holyhead, then crossed the Irish Sea (which, thanks to Dramamine, I slept through) to Dun Laoghaire, and then a train to Dublin, where we spent 5 days at the house of a childhood friend of my grandmother's. Most of my school assignments went undone, but not the essay, and I worked over the entire weekend once we got back home to finish it before returning to school on Monday. That same day, the rest of the class turned in essays that they had been told to write over the weekend about a local drought. None were more than a page. My essay was about 20 pages. That's when I first decided I wanted to write.
I've never had a moment where I thought I want to be a writer. I just write because I have too many things going on in my head and writing is an outlet for that, and importantly I enjoy doing it. I loved reading books ever since I was a young kid, where I recall starting with books like The Famous Five and The Secret Seven, and I've not stopped reading since. I knew I could write at the end of high school when I was sixteen, where I wrote ten short stories in twelve days that made up fifty percent of my English exam – and still got an A for my GCSE exam result. Not something I'd like to do again, as thinking up ten ideas and writing them was a chore in such a short space of time, but I did like to mess about too much in school.
I have always read but due to schooling issues had it half drilled into me that I was dyslexic and slow (will not lecture about my horrific school life but turns out I'm not either). Anyway I notice I did pick things up quickly if I wanted to so when was finally allowed my first computer at thirteen I started to write to prove everyone wrong. Now it's more of a life support and I get extremely cranky if I can not write something every twenty-fours. On the downside I'm still paranoid about the evil 'd' word coming up so very rarely show anything I have written to anyone. Thus why I am here. I have had breaks from writing like the one I'm going through now. They all evolve around my laptops breaking down. *sigh*
I think I was 7 years old, and I met a well-selling writer (I'll not say who) and I will admit I was impressed by him, and wanted to emulate him. Very quickly it became something I just felt I had to do; not doing it, or at least not thinking about it, just made me feel weird. I can't explain it, but I guess I can't help but write.
Pretty much all of my conscious life, I guess. My parents read a lot to me ever since I was a baby, but, eventually, I had become so annoying with the typical never-ending questioning that kids do that they started teaching me how to read myself (and how to write), so that I could do my own research/entertain myself and leave them alone. When I was five, I was already saying I wanted to be a writer and was pretty sure of it. I would change my mind about any other potential career within days, but writing was a permanent goal. I only started writing regularly a couple of years later, though, because of all the stimuli from school.
25 was the first time I put my heart in a story and worked many hours to craft it. That was my christening.
The sky opened. God spoke. I've been questing ever since. One day, me and my band of brave knights will find the HOLY GRAIL. Then I'll get to go back to Camelot (tis a silly place) and see my ever-so faithful Gwen. Oh, wrong thread... Seriously, I knew I wanted to write when I was ten after telling a story to my siblings. It was just plain fun.
i've enjoyed writing for others to read, since i was a high school newspaper columnist and editor, back in the mid-50s... didn't think of doing it as a career or profession though, till i was in my early 40s, when marriage #2 was on its way to being over and i was down to only the last 2 of my 7 kids still needing raising... at that point, i took myself off to mexico for a couple of weeks of solitude, to 'see if i could be a writer'... a novel started itself my first night there, and 'that's all she wrote!'... been writing ever since and will continue to do so for as many years as i have left...
A big part of it for me was my parents reading books to me at bedtime. Eventually I had the ability to carry on reading after "lights out" (which is obviously what my parents wanted me to do). I read a couple of books by myself then, and though afterwards, 'I want to write. I love stories, who not make my own?' Once that thought entered my mind, there was no turning back. I was about eight or nine at the time, and I wrote the beginning of novels from then on, as I never finished them at that age. I completed my first short story when I was sixteen (really late, I know), and completed my first novel when I was about seventeen, and I recently finished my second only a few months ago - I am nineteen years-old now. Personally I think the majority of writers have the writing ability and eagerness to write "in their blood", although I do believe some people can pick the skill up later on in life.
When I was a wee lad in the 1970's, feverishly reading all the sci-fi I could get my grubby little hands on, I felt a void. Not a calling, not a feeling that somewhere inside I was qualitatively different to my low-brow brethren who were more concerned with their playground status as tether-ball gods. I read and read and the reading, though filled of spaceships, first contact, other worlds, was sadly very much like the world I lived, in real life, on the dusty playground. I was the only little gay latin boy in both worlds. That's what made me want to write. To fill that void. Things are much different today, but we're talking about the early/mid seventies here.
I dont really have a great story but i remember when i was in sixth grade and we were supposed to write a poem , mine was the funniest and the teacher asked me to read it so i stood up in front of the board looked at my classmates and held the torn piece of paper where i wrote the poem in my hand . i didn't really need it, i memorized all the lines because what i wrote wasn't a poem it was a song a rap song someone could say. It was about a smart wolf that broke his computer and couldn't make a formula or something. i started singing it and dacing in the class we all laughed and it was fun but that wasnt the time i knew i wanted to write. It was when i first saw Sora fight Riku in Kingdom hearts 1 the summer of 8th grade i don't know what it was the feeling of excitment the speech about the strenght you get from the people you want to protect, that day i knew i wanted to create something that good no i wanted something better i was always told that i had great fantasy so i though it was time to put in use. two more years passed until i got my first great idea. Life wasn't helpful thought Financial problems having job while studying , took a lot of my free time down the drain but in two days from now ...................................
My love for writing started in my elementary school years. I didn't write back then, but I was a daydreamer. After I'd read a book, I'd get lost in my thoughts coming up with possible scenarios of what happened after the book ended. Sometimes, I'd imagine myself as the best friend of the main character, having awesome adventures. But one day, I thought of what would happen if I betrayed her, joining the other side. As I think about, that was teaching me to think of story ideas and plot twists. When I was 12 years old, I started homeschooling. The first thing my mom had me do every morning was write a short story...but the catch was that I had to finish it in under 30 minutes! Coming up with something--anything--to write was so much fun. Afterwards, my sister and I would read our stories out loud and laugh at our crazy, silly plots. Sometimes my mom would have to make me stop writing so I could do my other subjects. Because of those exercises, writing became my favorite thing to do! My mom was also a big encourager of reading, so I always had a book in my hand. I read lots of books throughout my school years and those authors inspired me. Not until I was 17 did I think about writing more seriously, with a goal in mind of sharing my stories with others.
Thought about it many times. I'm one of those people who believes their life has been interesting enough to write about. But not wanting to disclose a fair amount of it to people who know me was always a roadblock. Adults go through developmental stages just like kids do and I reached the "I want to influence people" stage. That's when I decided to write the book I'm working on. I knew what I wanted to say and the fantasy I wanted to live saying it. I wrote the story plan out (or very rough first draft if you will) when I decided to join the NaNoWriMo challenge. After two false starts I poured out 45K words in the last week of November, then kept going. By the end of Dec I had a 134K word duology. All I lacked was the skill to write the story in a form people would be able to read. So I set out to learn and now a year and a half later I think I'm an acceptable writer. I'm halfway through turning the first of the two books into a decent novel, still learning of course, but the few chapters I think are in final draft form, I've gotten very good feedback on. And more importantly, I'm satisfied with them. I'll never be one of those incredibly talented natural writers, but hopefully my story will carry me.
I wanted to write ever since I read a children's version of 'The Three Musketeers'. I must have read that book fifteen times by the time I was 8. I wrote my first serial of novels (3) when I was 15, it featured my best friend and I as protagonists and a whole bunch of cute guys. It was dreadful but we had hysterics reading it. That's when I knew I was going to write books one day.
Ever since I first tried writing with my wife. I had written for years before that, ever since I was 13, so had the Mrs, but both of us had problems finishing any stories on our own. When we started writing together, something just clicked and we've been on this road ever since (5 years & 1 000 000+ words and counting). When KaTrian first suggested it, I was very sceptical, but decided to give it a shot just for shits and giggles. Turns out I would've missed out on what became my life's main passion if I hadn't tried it. We agreed I'd write one female and one male character, and she'd do the same. We settled on a medieval but realistic setting, did some basic character planning (just half a page or so for each character), and just started writing with no idea about the plot, about the true natures of the character or anything. Now writing that first draft of our first book is one of my fondest memories.
This is amazing, not to mention the fact you remembered the itinerary too! A 20 page essay at 10 years old - do you remember what your teacher said about that? I like the phrasing that it filled a void, like finally finding that missing puzzle piece. It's all there, arranged, and the one thing that is missing is how you feel about yourself. You must have an amazing mother. What a gift to give her children! Good luck to you!
I wish I could tell you that there's some big story bursting inside of me urging to be written. But, it's more subtle than that. It's like a river current that keeps pulling me, usually without my notice, towards writing. If I stop writing, I'll eventually find myself with a pen in hand.
My mother has kept little notebooks full of illustrated stories I wrote when I was four or five. I was also an elder sister and told my brother and sister stories all the time. So I guess I was pretty much born wanting to write. My middle daughter also wrote stories from about the age of seven, and now she is studying to be an animator ahe is always writing screenplays and doing storyboards--the bug has clearly passed to her, but in a different form.
I don't remember ever not writing, really. I was writing crappy little stories from the moment I learnt how to string sentences together. But yes, I have been wavering with my writing for the last six years. It's not that I don't want to write - the will is still there - I just have a very stressful lifestyle these days and never get any time to just lose myself in my own head anymore. The longer you leave it, the harder it is to get back into the swing. Or it is for me anyway. I hope my flow will come back eventually. What about you? What made you want to write? When you say you're questioning everything, what do you mean? Are you having a bit of a waver yourself?
