1. mbinks89

    mbinks89 Active Member

    Joined:
    Nov 14, 2012
    Messages:
    548
    Likes Received:
    27
    Location:
    Montreal

    How old were you when you began to write

    Discussion in 'General Writing' started by mbinks89, Mar 2, 2013.

    And I don't mean back in kindergarten when you learned to write your name. I mean as a serious, ongoing dedication. I'm seventeen now, and it was around my seventeenth birthday that I started to write, and a few months after that that I began to write a thousand words (at least) daily. How about you guys? I hear about writers like Stephen King starting at seven and I feel like a late bloomer.
     
  2. minstrel

    minstrel Leader of the Insquirrelgency Supporter Contributor

    Joined:
    Jul 11, 2010
    Messages:
    10,742
    Likes Received:
    9,993
    Location:
    Near Sedro Woolley, Washington
    I began writing seriously at about ten years old. That went on more or less through my high school years. I didn't write at all when I was in university, but I got back into it very heavily when I got my first real job. I've been writing ever since, but never anywhere near as prolific as Stephen King. (Why does everybody compare themselves to Stephen King? It's completely unrealistic.)
     
  3. thirdwind

    thirdwind Member Contest Administrator Reviewer Contributor

    Joined:
    Jul 17, 2008
    Messages:
    7,885
    Likes Received:
    3,395
    Location:
    Boston
    I wrote stuff as a kid, but it wasn't anything serious. I began writing seriously in my late teens.
     
  4. Youniquee

    Youniquee (◡‿◡✿) Contributor

    Joined:
    Nov 18, 2010
    Messages:
    729
    Likes Received:
    38
    Location:
    Under your bed.
    When I wrote my first ever story thing? About 9 or 10. But for the whole of me being 11 to 15 years old I didn't write (I kept a diary, does that count? lol) so you could say, I only seriously started writing when I was 15~
     
  5. Phoenix Hikari

    Phoenix Hikari New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 21, 2012
    Messages:
    327
    Likes Received:
    7
    I started writing when I was 12, I mainly wrote songs for Hollywood guys that I wanted to marry back then. xD then I started writing poetry in both my mother language and English, slowly I realized English is my mother language in disguise so I never used Arabic again. I wrote few stories and kept a diary, I also wrote a novel when I was 17 but it is like an extension of the Final Fantasy video game. I have written many short stories since some are finished some are not. I have over 500 poems and currently 9k+ into my first serious novel. I love writing, once I wanted to write a book about how prissy girls are stupid and how men should treat women. lol, that was hilarious.
     
  6. The Tourist

    The Tourist Banned

    Joined:
    Mar 27, 2012
    Messages:
    1,081
    Likes Received:
    28
    Location:
    Wisconsin.
    I was in fourth grade. Our teacher had a box in the corner of the room, and we could drop off our poems and short stories. On Friday afternoons before dismissal, she would read the anonymous entries. I wrote a "to be continued" story and added to it from week to week. I was hooked.
     
  7. Thomas Kitchen

    Thomas Kitchen Proofreader in the Making Contributor

    Joined:
    Nov 5, 2012
    Messages:
    1,248
    Likes Received:
    448
    Location:
    I'm Welsh - and proud!
    The first beginnings of a story I wrote was when I was eight or nine, although the first project I finished (a short story) was when I was sixteen, and I've sort of gone on from there.

    :D^Btw, Tourist, love that!^:D
     
  8. NigeTheHat

    NigeTheHat Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Nov 20, 2008
    Messages:
    1,596
    Likes Received:
    1,808
    Location:
    London
    I think I was 6 when I wrote my first story, and I've been writing on and off ever since.
     
  9. lauramaidah

    lauramaidah Banned

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2013
    Messages:
    40
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    reddit.com
    I learned Korean first as a babe. Then English. Weirdly, I forgot all my Korean. So now I hyper-read and I started writing English stories around age 13/12

    edit: by all my korean i meant reading and writing. I understand it. My bad
     
  10. JohnW

    JohnW New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 13, 2013
    Messages:
    15
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    Yorkshire
    I'm 59 and just getting some ideas together.
     
  11. lauramaidah

    lauramaidah Banned

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2013
    Messages:
    40
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    reddit.com
    ^very cool, cool. ideas are cool.
     
  12. cazann34

    cazann34 Active Member

    Joined:
    Sep 18, 2012
    Messages:
    516
    Likes Received:
    42
    Location:
    Scotland, UK
    I've kept a diary from the age of eight, it was my first real commitment to writing every day. I still keep a diary but don't write every day. Writing creatively (not counting school) has been about three years, lately I have been writing every day but its not the normal I tend to have a lots of days off. Breathing time I call it.
     
  13. lauramaidah

    lauramaidah Banned

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2013
    Messages:
    40
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    reddit.com
    Breathing is good. I used to want a tattoo of that on my wrist. "Breathe". Swear to god, someone super-famous beat me to it.

    If you count diaries, I started in Korean at a baby age. I guess that was creative writing.
     
  14. ms627

    ms627 New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 25, 2013
    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    I wrote my first story when I was about...8. And it involved my love for Link from the Zelda video games. He was such a swell guy. At about 11 I wrote an actual story, which, impressively enough, had a plot. From then on, I've been thinking of plots and characters and writing whenever I can. So, I'd say I was about 11. :)
     
  15. sarah_g

    sarah_g New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2013
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    I probably seriously started writing when I was 11 or 12, mostly just Roleplaying though. I started (usually failing to finish) my own short stories around 14ish. I'm back to Roleplaying on Forums now though, mostly to expand character ideas, etc. I really tried my own novel (and mostly failed at that cause it's like half way doneish and been that way for a year) at 17? I'm trying a different style of writing now though...going to see where it takes me.
     
  16. peachalulu

    peachalulu Member Reviewer Contributor

    Joined:
    May 20, 2012
    Messages:
    4,628
    Likes Received:
    3,817
    Location:
    occasionally Oz , mainly Canada
    Grade three - I was what 8? my math sucks. That was my favorite school year - ever! My teacher was young and super-nice
    and for the entire year we did creative writing - one of the projects was to write a 'book' of about 10 pages, draw pictures
    and she'd laminate the cover ( the school had invested in some laminator so we put it to good use ) then we put the 'books'
    in the library for others to read. Feeback-critics-fans!
    Unfortunately after that no other teachers did much with creative writing and I got out of it until I was 11 or 12 -
    I wasn't waiting around for a class, and there was no stopping me.
     
  17. TimHarris

    TimHarris Member

    Joined:
    Oct 11, 2012
    Messages:
    172
    Likes Received:
    5
    Location:
    Oslo, Norway
    Well, I did enjoy writing in school. However, I lost all interested when I started getting negative feedback on my writing from my teachers, who would tell me I should stop always choosing the fiction topics. Whenever we had essays, we could choose between fantasy, analysis, poetry, that kind of stuff. All other topics than fictionjust bored me, so I stuck with it, but as I constantly heard from my teachers that in "the real life, you cannot write fiction." I kinda stopped writing.

    I only started writing seriously last year, when I was 22. I wish I had kep on writing from an early age, but I dont really think I have missed out on all that much. At my age, I am old enough that I can start to evaluate my work seriously, and learn faster than I could have possibly have hoped to do if I was, lets say 15, simply because I am more critical of my work now than what I was, and because I have read enough books to know what works and what doesnt, and thus I will probably end up writing less garbage overall (At least that is what I hope). Also, as I primarily write in english, and I am not a native english speaker myself, I have a much larger vocabulary now that I did before, and that really does help a lot, and ofcourse, let's not forget I have a lot more life experience that I can draw on now that before. So all in all, I am happy that I found out that being a writer is what I want at this age, and not ten years from now.
     
  18. A.Tad.of.Conrad

    A.Tad.of.Conrad New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 23, 2013
    Messages:
    27
    Likes Received:
    1
    16 when I started being serious about it. Ever since I can remember I've always enjoyed constructing stories in my head, though.
     
  19. Talmay

    Talmay Member

    Joined:
    Jan 4, 2013
    Messages:
    94
    Likes Received:
    1
    I wanted to be a comic book artist, actually. Until I realized I couldn't draw worth shit and decided to settle on the next best thing: writing. If I couldn't draw it in the very least I could describe it. I think I was around 12.
     
  20. Scribblefae

    Scribblefae New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 19, 2013
    Messages:
    12
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    The Netherlands
    I've always made up stories and ideas and such, but started really writing them down when I was about 12. After that, I couldn't stop anymore. I'm 24 now, still going on happily and working on what could perhaps grow out to something I'd like to get published :)
     
  21. mg357

    mg357 Active Member

    Joined:
    Dec 3, 2012
    Messages:
    420
    Likes Received:
    45
    I started writing when i was 20 years old, that is when i wrote my very first book.
     
  22. Lovely Lass

    Lovely Lass New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 1, 2013
    Messages:
    42
    Likes Received:
    0
    I started writing in middleschool, about the same time I became interested in reading books.You could say that my inspiration to write came from the awe of all the books I began to read. I found myself useing the writing language as a replacement in my lack of public/scocial speaking skills. Curiously enough, I also found my writing enoumously different compared to how I actually talked. This surprised me, and I have kept on writing ever since. I have not written any novels and I would not rate my writings on a high scale, but the freeing sensation when I write captivates me. In my senior year in high school we had to write a short story based on a puzzle picture. I had never finished any of my stories and found this quite difficult to achieve. Once I finished this creative writing assignment and read back on what I had written...I could not fathome the idea that I actually wrote this piece of work. It is hard to pinpoint when I first started writing seriously. But in that moment of realization, there was something that stirred inside; a desire to write and create worlds unknown. The idea to write my thoughts had never accured to me, and in doing so it made them tangible. That realization was my love for words and expressionism; In that moment I had discovered my voice.
     
  23. Fivvle

    Fivvle Member

    Joined:
    May 24, 2012
    Messages:
    213
    Likes Received:
    4
    Location:
    Washington
    I started writing in third grade, when our teacher told us to write a fairy-tale. I made the longest one in class. It was twenty-two pages altogether.
     
  24. punchthedamnkeys

    punchthedamnkeys Member

    Joined:
    Feb 20, 2013
    Messages:
    40
    Likes Received:
    0
    The first time I really got a feeling of enjoyment from writing was in fourth or fifth grade, I was about 10 or 11 years old. I remember once a week we had to write a short story one page long. I just loved being able to make things up as I wrote along. I didn't much writing after that on my own, unless it was for a school assignment. In high school, I really do enjoy writing. I always looked forward to writing essays, I found myself really taking it seriously trying to get the best mark I could on them. It was the only time I would actually put as much of an effort as I could in high school.

    The first time I really thought about writing seriously was within the last month. I've tried writing a book a couple of times in the past but I never could come up with a story I really felt I should write... and now I really feel I got the story I want to write.

    I like looking at an empty page thinking how am I gonna fill this up? Then the satisfaction of finding a way to fill it up with words.
     
  25. Quetzalcoatl

    Quetzalcoatl New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 18, 2013
    Messages:
    11
    Likes Received:
    2
    Location:
    Sonora, Mexico
    When I was fourteen. I've always loved story-telling, as far as I can remember, although my Elementary school tries at it were mostly Final Fantasy and Fire Emblem rip-offs. :rolleyes:

    Also, I sucked at English then. Nowadays, although it's not my first language, its the one I write better in.
     

Share This Page

  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
    Dismiss Notice