I'm not sure there is a single thing that drew me into writing. But overall I would say it was the books I read. They were so engrossing I desperately wanted to create my own stories and share such magic with others. It's the ideas that draw me in, an interesting story waiting to be told, a situation that needs to be resolved or just white hot emotion inside me that needs to be put to paper. I've been writing for a long time now, since I can remember really (though those stories were terrible ). Around two years I seriously began writing regularly and stories of greater length, and I have been enjoying ever since
I loved reading since as far back as I can remember. I read everything. Though fairytales and magic were my favorite thing, I also loved non-fiction. We had a set of Encyclopedia Britannica and I would sit and read them for hours just to learn something new. I discovered writing in third grade. I loved writing assignments. I wrote my first book in forth grade ... I wish I still had that paper. It was a seven page story with illustrations. In high school I competed in journalism and wrote a couple of articles for the community paper. Then I got married and became busy with family and life. About 14 years ago I began writing again. I had my first paid piece when I became a staff writer for an area newspaper. I still write non-fiction. But I always knew I would write a book. And I knew I would write romances with happily ever afters ... and I did ... and still do. Funny you should mention Flowers for Algernon. In high school I was also in drama and we performed that play. I was Alice. I'm glad you had a good teacher in college. My English teacher in college was so bad that I went to the head of the department. He suggested I CLEP English ... so I did and am glad of it. Thanks for starting this thread. It is a good one.
To be honest? While I'm a little embarrassed to say, it was through a LEGO Bionicle fansite [BZPower.com]. There's an awesome community of people there and a good amount of fanfiction writers. So that's where I started. Writing Bionicle fanfiction. Which is why I'm still a part of that site -- not for the Bionicle aspect of it necessarily [though I still find myself slightly fond of it -- just one of those childhood things you don't want to leave behind, you know? Kinda like Andy in Toy Story 3, not wanting to leave his toys behind =P], but because I've met so many awesome people that I've become friends with and because it's what started my interest in now one of my favorite pasttimes: writing. I'm also a staff member there, so that has something to do with it, but I probably would still be a member there anyway, for the reasons stated above. But yeah, technically it was something I read; I read a piece of fanfiction there, liked it, and eventually decided I wanted to do the same thing, then started writing. My first...four or five...stories really sucked. And I mean really. But then I really had a breakthrough, and with all the help that the people gave there, I believe that I have excelled tremendously from when I started out. I don't pretend to call myself great, but at least I'm not as horrible as I was then [I really should post a story of mine here some time...], and I'm decent at the least. And I'm eternally grateful for that, for their advice, and for their support. There's that "authors that inspire you" topic in Book Discussion or somewhere, and so really, the true answer to that for me wouldn't be published authors, but the authors from that site. They're the ones that inspired me to write in the first place and to keep writing.
My story is similar to the above. Back in 2004, I believe it was, I caught word of a new Legend of Zelda game and, being the major Zelda fan I was, I decided to scour the interwebs for info. Pretty soon, I came across a forum dedicated to all things Zelda, so naturally, I joined. Shortly afterward, I entered a thread with an interesting name just to see what it was about. Turns out it was a fan fiction. Now, before this moment, I had it in my head that in order to be a decent writer, you had to dedicate a considerable portion of your life to training in the subject to have a ghost of a chance. And while I suppose that's true, keep in mind that I was extremely naive at age 13. I truly believed that all good writers would be professionally published. But this fan fiction, which I took a look at on a whim, chipped one little piece of naivete off of my shoulders. When I saw the quality of this story and heard that the author was only a few years older than myself, I realized writing may not be so inaccessible as I thought. After all, this random high schooler from the Internet could write something worth reading--why not me?
