Gosh. I was actually attempting to write stories at age 16 (in 1964-65), but I struggled with the fact that handwriting was the only option. (Didn't have a typewriter and computers were sci-fi inventions.) I kept crossing things out, writing in the margins, copying, recopying ...and finally gave up. My writing was an indecipherable dog's breakfast. I always did 'make up stories' though. But getting any of them written had to wait till the advent of my first wordprocessor ...a Mackintosh Performa, acquired in 1994—and the ability to delete, copy and paste, and make copies of document versions.
I was crap - I didn't really start developing as a writer until my late thirties and i still had several false starts. I wouldn't say you can't be a good writer at age 16, but its definitely easier when you've had more life experience
I can't speak for quality, but I'd finished a couple of books, full length for what I was writing, although I had no interest in being traditionally published then and still don't. My mother got me into it, she wanted to be a writer and was writing mysteries, so I decided I'd do it too. I was writing in the vein of Hardy Boys and Three Investigators back then and I have no clue where any of those books went. It was all handwritten on lined paper back in those days.
That’s nice to hear- honestly at this age I don’t have much experience to write from, yet still get angry at myself for not pumping out perfect quality novels every time.
I was heavily in to poetry, so I wrote down poems and entered into youth contests. I remember I got published by Sewanee's literary journal which they extended to high school students. I have the newspaper article that lists the students published, but i cannot for the life of me remember what poem i submitted or even the journal. I cant even find the archived one on the website. I know I was published in it because I kept the acceptance letter (i was SUPER excited, because it was my first "big" publication) and I kept the newspaper article.... weird. I had a few more local publications that were announced on the loud speaker during high school as well. But, by 16, I had finished a 36 chapter long fan fiction on DevientART. I'm not saying i was hot stuff at 16 (heck, I reread that fanfic and OMG, the story has potential and the pacing was ok, but the writing and spelling was TERRIBLE!). But I was always writing. There are actually a few Ideas I jotted down back then that I want to pick up again and continue. I feel like I was better, creatively, with coming up with things to write about, and I feel like now that I'm older, I have the skill to execute what i couldnt back then.
I think back to what I might have done if I'd had a wordprocessor at age 16 and it makes me shudder a bit. I was so immature! I would probably either have produced intensely romantic crap (I don't mean romantic in the sense of Mills & Boon, but in overall outlook on life ...the rose-coloured glasses Walt Disney flavoured thing) or I'd have been so worried about revealing my intensely romantic crap side to anyone that I would never have showed it to anybody OR I'd have tried to write serious crap to show to my teachers. Either way ...I'm glad I waited! I am a very different person now, from what I was then.
Really rough. But I was ambitious - I wrote my first novel back then inspired by Twin Peaks. No computer so I used lined sheets of paper attached to a clip board that I carried everywhere. The plot was confusing, the dialogue cheesy, the huge cast of characters were two dimensional. But my technique hasn't changed much - overwriting - lots of dialogue for a first draft and a confusing plot! So it's interesting to see how much I've grown - I really understand the importance of character and tone, now - without losing my humor or eccentricity.
Oh, I'm pretty sure if an adult had read my teenage years portfolio, I'd be institutionalized. I had a very dark and negative view of everything, and it reflected in what I wrote. The only romantic story I wrote, ended with the couple dying without ever being together. BOY was I a strange kid! and nothing has change much in what I write now.... there has been a death or the idea of death in everything I've had published thus far
I am constantly surprised at how many young folks seem to have a very dark view of things, when it comes to writing. I was the exact opposite. Pollyanna II. I didn't like horror (which wasn't really fashionable then) and didn't enjoy grim and gritty. I wasn't an angsty teenager at all. Antsy, maybe, but not angsty. I wasn't a fan of fluff, but preferred stories like Anne of Green Gables, Huckleberry Finn, David Copperfield, Treasure Island, Jane Eyre, Old Yeller, Mrs Mike, etc. I liked personalities in stories, mostly set in the past, in places I would have enjoyed living in. I could take 'sad' stuff ...when people died, etc ...but I wasn't negative.
I didn't even want to be a writer back then. I loved the escape of reading, though, and devouring literary works was pretty high on my agenda for some reason. But the idea of becoming a writer hadn't even crossed my mind. I can remember hating the idea of writing anything down that wasn't a school assignment. I had kept a journal for some reason. A bunch of bitches snatched it from me and read it aloud to each other through a locked bathroom door. They laughed at everything and I was humiliated. Why would I have ever written down all my secrets and ideas? When they gave it back to me I tore up every page and never wanted to write anything ever again. I had to go to summer school and I was forced to take a creative writing course. I had this deep need for acceptance and approval. I tried really hard at everything, but didn't do well at anything. We had to write a short story and it got submitted into a contest for young writers (all of whom were probably also in summer school). I wrote a story about a broken home and a messed up childhood that would have explained the unexplainable teenage angst that was upon me. My teacher fixed my spelling and grammar mistakes with a red pen and gave me back the assignment with a mediocre grade. I didn't win the contest, but I did receive an honorable mention. There was a short paregraph from the judges about why they liked it. I felt like nobody had said something so nice to me in a really long time. Still, it wasn't until I was in college where I wrote anything and that was mainly because creative writing courses were supposed to be easy As. I quickly thought writers were cool and fell in love with the best one in the room. Notice me, I silently screamed. I read more and wrote more. I wondered if I wrote better if things like love would come easier. Could I ever be adored the way I adored? I'm not sure this is the best foundation for being a writer. Or maybe it is. I think there was a call to have a voice at some point, but I think it can be argued that writing isn't always the best avenue for that nor was it the only one I pursued. In my early 20s I harassed an editor to take me on as a staff writer. By my mid to late 20s I was traveling and seeing things and places I could have never imagined thanks to writing. But I'm not sure how much if any of it has to do with talent. These were hard jobs. I made a lot of big-life decisions around writing and my pursuits. There were times when I didn't write and there were times I did it feverishly. I think it's still like that. I question myself all the time, but I think it's important to work a piece until there are less questions. I'm a different kind of writer now and a different kind of person, but I'm not going to rest easy for one second believing I have any talent. For some of us, it's pretty hard to be average. To pull out of that takes an insane amount of dedication. I suggest the best way for doing that is by falling in love with as many writers as possible. You'll probably end up hating them all for wasting your time, but there's a drive during and after to be accepted in the same circles or even higher circles of those who broke your heart. All writers are assholes. I'm editing just to add that every writer I fell for literally and figuratively was for the written word and had little or nothing to do with who they were. Don't judge. I'm a writer now and kind of an asshole.
I think at that age I was more involved in writing non-fiction. I didn't start delving into the fiction realm until my early 20's when I started messing around with fan-fiction based on whatever game I was playing at the time. I finally developed my own original ideas starting around 26 or 27.
At 16 I was writing fanfiction. Prior to that point I had dabbled a little bit, but 16 or maybe 15, thereabouts, was when I decided this was something I wanted to do. I started a bunch of stories that I never finished. They weren't very sophisticated. There wasn't much plot to speak of, and characters barely had the one dimension. I leaned rather heavily on exposition, as I recall. The prose and pacing is best not mentioned, I think. It didn't help that I tried to write in a language I didn't entirely comprehend. But I had a lot of fun, and I probably learned a bit about what not to do. I'm still figuring out what to do, of course.
It was around 16 I actually started entertaining the idea of writing as a career. I didn't have a computer of my own, but used to use the ones at school a lot. I probably still have some stories hidden away somewhere on some repurposed AOL Online floppy disks, but I haven't been brave enough to try and look at them.
Quite good, really. I mean, that was only two years ago for me. My writing was good because I have an expansive vocabulary and was precocious, but one of my chief problems was the verbosity of my prose. I didn't get the hang of things yet. Of course, there's still a wealth of things for me to learn now and in the future as a writer.
I enjoyed it, I did it, my teachers complimented me, and there was a few brief moments where it made me stand out for a second or two. I wouldn't say I was very good though. I just liked it and knew a few tricks. It's a completely different experience when your peers are all actually into writing compared to high school--when only a fraction even read books at all. Never even attempted to write a book at that time (even if I talked about it sometimes). I wrote a decent amount but it was all journaling. I was beginning to consider going to school for it since I had to pick something apparently.
Age 16, junior year, was when I started keeping a regular journal, on notebook paper, in what looked like my regular school binder. My teachers thought I was taking class notes. And I was, in the margins and in between diary entries about the shenanigans my classmates and I got into. (I still have those journals. They're massive.) No fiction yet, then. That had to wait for my senior year. Wrote a decent amount of poetry and what was supposed to be a screenplay, set in some undesignated East Coast American city the 1890s (I lived in the Midwest). At that time I got deeply into Leo Rosten and other Jewish-American authors, and I still have the first pages of what was framed as a medieval Jewish folktale. It dripped with eastern European place names and Yiddish terms, but was really a satire about the guy I was secretly in love with, his guy friends, and some of our teachers. Alas, I never finished it.
My very first completed story was done in fourth-grade; it was a sci-fi/horror short about giant spiders from space; I even illustrated it with goofy drawings, lol!
Other than what was required for school, I didn't write at all at that age. I didn't start writing until I was nearly in my 40's.
I started writing when I was 12, but I didnt learn anything about how to write until I was 18. That was around the time when I finished my first novel which immediately landed in the trashbin. Also Im still at the same stage: Learning
I think we are all still learning I know I'm learning a lot from the peoples here on WF. I would have liked to have found a community like this when I was 16!
