I've written my whole life, but always just for myself or friends. I dabbled in art and theater a little when I was in high school, but focused on writing when I went to collage. I never viewed myself as an artist or a creator, I just always loved seeing things I thought on paper, the images in my head transcribed and recorded permanently for my own scrutiny and review. I love deconstructing ideas, thoughts, and dreams, and choice words convey so much more meaning and depth than any picture or moving image ever will. Some people say that a picture is worth a thousand words. To them I say: Love, Apollo 13, holocaust, sex, winter. As I have aged I have become more driven and scheduled it all my endeavors. Writing a book is an adventure for me, but it is also a goal. A challenge. It is not about new experiences, it is about completion and mastery. Even if I remain unpublished I will continue to write, always learning and improving. My humble body of work will remain after I die, my flow of ideas and desires recorded for my family to remember me by. Even if you bloom late in life, you were always growing.
I know that I look at some things different now than I did when I was younger and I'm sure it influences much I do, but I don't know that it is an improvement. I'll give you something to look forward too. Many of us who remain active, mentally and physically, into our later years do not feel or think that much different than we did thirty, forty, even fifty years ago.
According to research on these types of things, generally any skills requires about 10,000 hours of work to master. So, the earlier you start the larger an advantage you have, but with writing (and most skills), you don't have to start at an earlier age to be good at it. You just have to work at it for a long, long time.
Well, I loved reading and I loved books ever since I was a little kid but I didn't think I actually could write nor I had any interest in writing until I was around 18. I guess my love of writing came from my love of reading, at some point I told myself; 'hey, you love reading so much and enjoy getting lost in a fantasy world of someone else's creation, maybe it's time to create you own fantasy world, write your own story'. I don't consider late teens to be a late age for starting a writing career though, there is no 'typical' age for writing. it's all about when you discover that passion within you, that passion to tell stories. As long as you follow that passion, doesn't matter when and at what age you begin writing.
That assumes one's skill can only be acquired by writing. But I've learned how to learn (the most important skill), learned how to communicate more concisely/precisely, and learned any number of other skills that are applicable to writing. I'm not sure how many hours my four year endeavor amounted to so far. I have more than 300,000 words on paper between my first outline/draft, my discarded chapters and my current final draft. Estimating rewrites it would at least double that. 600,000 words divided by 10,000 hours gives one 60 words an hour. I think I have at least 10,ooo hours of writing in those four years using this analysis. But looking at it another way, a full time job amounts to 2080 hours if one works a 40 hour week. 10,000 hours would be 5 years of full time writing and I've not done anything close to that. And therein are some reasons such measures need to be taken with a grain of salt.
I second that. Scratch any 60- or 70-year-old and you'll find a much younger person aching to get back out.
I have been writing for as long as I can remember. I went through a lot of phases as a kid though. Writing stories and drawing cartoons to go with them, designing video games, designing board games, writing cartoon TV shows but then in high school/college I got really into film so I focused my energy on writing shorts and full-length screenplays. Not until 23 years old (2 years ago) did I start focusing on prose.
I am almost parallel with Jannert. Started current WIP, like him, in 1995 in my late 40s, stalled out, and picked it up again in my late 60s. Going back to the 8th grade, I had done some short stories, none published, some poetry, likewise, and started several books in my late thirties, none finished. Most of my life has been associated with the Navy, active duty flying and then as contractor. I have always done a lot of technical writing in that career, some quite voluminous (250 pages, mostly by myself, in one case), which forces discipline both in writing and deadlines. Published a few technical magazine articles in my 30s/40s. MS is in Aero Engineering/Avionics, never took a creative writing class. Life experience gives you a lot of self confidence to bring to the word processor. Late twenties and thirties can be a challenge to begin writing. Very few of us will be able to support ourselves by writing, and at that point in life our lives, we are trying to get established in our day jobs, and balance the demands of family and offspring, usually without enough money. We may not be able at that point to commit the necessary 1-3 hours per day to writing then. But in our 40s/50s as the children leave the nest, we can find the time to explore that option. At age 68, as I cruise in to START my second career in writing with a finally finished WIP, yes, I think it is possible to be a late bloomer. Ask me again about my exuberant self-confidence after I deal with my 50th rejection slip!
1st post. Always enjoyed writing, when allowed to write what I want. That was the knife of divide right there. As a kid I made up my mind quickly wether I would learn the class matterial or not. I hated to write about boring and senseless, to me, things. Give me an open page and I loved the work. Funnell me into a subject or theme that I have less than zero interest for and I would learn nothing at all, collect my D or C- for the effort and hope something actually intersting was next. Nope. The following are the ONLY times in school I enjoyed writing anything for myself, otherwise they were assignments I hated somethign awful: I first enjoyed really creating something fun when a seventh-grade teacher assigned us to write a Tall-Tale. I practicly plagarized an obscure story I knew from my bookshelf - I had a great time doing it! Ninth grade english class gave us free reign over a story, and It was my own. The teacher liked it quite a bit. My senior year of college did assign us to interpretively report on a book but let us do it our way. That was the only time in all education I was taught about multiple-drafts. Previously new ideas were frowned on, especially when creatively trying something new to me. Anyway, I did well on that and enjoyed the process. Here and there were some free writings as well in a notebook or two but I never pursued it seriously because my grades told me I sucked so who would be interested? My focus became a degree to get and flying to do. In the middle of all that and after, I was off to distraction land of video and role-playing games, then flying for a living, a family, and then at thirty-eight, on a driving vacation, my three-year-old sparked the interest again. We quickly made up a game to keep her occupied where she told me her favorite farm animals and what they they liked to do. BAM! storytime of hide and seek on a hot farm day. I always had ideas, without common sense of budgets, of what would make a great game or movie and after that vacation, I figured it took no budget at all to write. So, here I am, trying to quickly learn to write more well better good goodest. I've set up a homework blog for myself. Very small flash fiction pieces that are limmited in size to only a single sheet of hotel note pad. It lets me learn without feeling swamped in size and forces me to strip it down. Now I have a large project going. It's mostly writing itself. I'm trying to catch up and its terrifying in a way. I've been convinced by school grades, twenty-five years ago, that I'm not good, yet the very limited friends that have heard an idea or seen something has liked it. I'm so worried about structure/grammar that it's hard to do a first draft without trying to fix it along the way. I should just get the story out and fix it later. That's what it's like to be late to the party-lots of crunchy stuff and no dip for flavor. I write for me and my ideas come forth for my own entertainment because I'm not seeing anything that I want to read. But I am seeing results quickly just from putting things on the blog and seeing the revisions along the way. I have probably 45 stories up now. It's a way of organization and putting myself out there in an accountable way that I'm responsible for. I'm trying to calm down and edit thoroughly but i'm hitting walls of just how much I know and not knowing I need to do more. I feel it's donw when it's not. So I have more to learn. I'll find a way to get that soon.
Way to go! Just tell the story, have fun doing it, and don't waste time criticizing yourself. In fact, while writing, imagine people finding your story fascinating, it is called visualizing success, and works wonders. SPaG can be taken care of Microsoft Word, and structure is what the editing phase is for. Welcome to the group, have you got 45 stories written, or 45 ideas waiting to be born?
45 on the blog. More in my head. all super short flash type with probably 3-5 exceptions on there. Blog in in my signature at bottom if you'd like to check it out. Leave somme feedback please would love to hear what you or anyone thinks. (Right now, I'm hammering out ch.6 in the big project during an airport delay. I'll grab a few hours where I can get em!)
I began writing elaborate stories before I could type; I would read out my stories aloud so that my father would type them out! As a result my writing ability developed earlier than that of most of my peers. I didn't begin reading quality literature until I turned 17. I personally believe that ANYBODY with the passion to write can become a good writer, with time and practice and time. But content-wise, starting early is definitely an advantage. There's something about premature emotion and passion that doesn't translate with older age. It's hard for me to explain, but there's a level of emotional depth that is best captured in writing at a younger age, when dramas and the transformations of life are most profoundly occurring.... In my personal opinion. But overall, age does not matter!
I read and wrote a little when I was a kid and stopped before the teenage years came around. When I was fifteen/sixteen, I started reading again (to impress a girl, go figure) and a year later I got my first idea for a novel and that's when I started tryin' to be a writer. Many ups and downs later, and here I am. Just can't seem to give it up.
How many of you "late bloomers" were doing something else kind of writing related while you weren't writing? I used to develop really intricate worlds - sheets and sheets of paper, with maps, and economic systems, political systems, etc. - and then just never write a story to go with them. I'd work out fictional businesses and figure out the income and expenses, including extraordinary items and advertising strategies - and then never write a story. My imagination was working, but it was just for personal consumption. I never even thought about sharing until I started writing mostly by accident.
Nothing (if you are not counting writing business letters in two sentences) Reading and getting more picky in reading every week. Okay there were two scenes without middle, beginning or end about in the middle of my non-writing period, but come on! Does that count? How can one start writing by 'accident'??
I've been writing and making up stories and outlining and plotting all my life. But I hadn't sat down and seriously tried to make something of it all until now. I've got a closet full of unfinished work that I think I'll start going through soon. Maybe some of it is salvageable.
Thank you very much. I'm glad it's enjoyable in one way or another and I think it's a good way of exercise for those without much time.
