Thread: At what age did you begin to write?

Excluding diaries (where one writes for oneself... hopefully), and letters to family, friends, etc, when did you begin to seriously write?

For me, I began to write shortly before my twenty-first birthday. It had never occurred to me beforehand, and one day, an idea came into my head, and I had an overwhelming compunction to write it down.

It was a short story that would later be titled Business, in which a young man and his uncle are walking down the street. Like many male children, he believes the men in their family to be supermen, who are better than every other. This ends when a destitute drunken chap in the street-- on his way to conduct some work, or business-- slights him with a racial epithet, to which the uncle withdraws a pistol and shoots the man dead. He continues as if nothing ever happened, shattering the impression he had heretofore given out.

It was received well, and low and behold, a penchant for writing was born.

How about you?

I started writing my first novel when I was 15 during my school summer holidays. I did it to stop my parents hassling me to get a holiday job.

I started writing 10 months ago. I don't remember writing in anything but diaries up until that point. My punctuation, my grammar, and my run-on sentences were atrocious. I spent hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of hours studying my books on my shelf, learning how the authors that I read would structure their sentences and what words they used that captivated me. I read 80 books a year at least, so I just sort of instinctively knew how the flow of a story should go. I wasn't very good with knowing when to add in a comma; I either used too many, or not enough. I didn't know that you were supposed to use a comma before a quotation, and right before the quotation ended. I had no idea that the semi colon could even be used, or when to use it. I taught myself so much about writing by reading writers blogs and helpful how to sites, that I feel I have a pretty good handle on the whole concept now.

It all started with my best friend. She had decided to write a novel, thinking it would be fun because we loved to read and discuss books so much. She must have worked on her book for a year before I was finally able to convince her to let me read it (she was embarassed and didn't want anyone to know she was writing). She finally emailed it to me one night after my relentless bitching that I wanted to read it. It showed up in my inbox, and I read the first two pages and it hit me. If she can do this? So can I.

So I opened up another window in Microsoft Word right then and started plotting out what I would want to have happen in my book. I started writing that night having no clue what the heck I was doing, but I kept at it, I kept writing every chance I got. I became obsessed with it, and thought about it, and my characters all the time. I wrote my first novel of 145,000 in only two months.

So I haven't been writing very long at all. But I feel like I've been doing it my whole life. I love it, and I can't imagine not doing it. ;0)

Sometime in high school. Don't remember exactly which grade, though.

There was a thread about this before too. But for those who don't know, my first poem was written when I was in 6th grade. We had a project on environment and the things we'd discussed at school were buzzing in my head even when I got back home. As I was getting ready for my afternoon nap, I felt a poem come to me. I was too afraid to get up and jot it down because mum was very strict about naps after school. When I woke up later, the poem was fresh as ever and I wrote it down then.


I wrote on and off while I was at school but they were all in jest. I started writing what I considered serious poetry after my 12th grade, but my poems took a more mature tone after I joined this site. Looking back now, the 'serious' poetry doesn't look so good.

There were many ages when I started writing. Here are a few.

My grandfather got me started writing poetry and short sketches before ever I started school. He died when I was ten but had laid the foundation. By age 12 I knew I wanted to be a writer. At 14 I began writing for two local newspapers. At 16 I was paying my way at university stringing for a dozen papers. At 21 I quit school without my phd and went to Southeast Asia where the Vietnam conflict was beginning to boil, kept up my old contacts, and added news syndicates. At 25 I returned to the U.S. where I fathered a child and became more involved in magazine writing, especially about the Civil Rights movement and the growing anti-war protests. At 32 I made a last trip to Asia, then was handed full custody of my eight-year-old son whose mother said 'I can't take it anymore'. At 42, with my son safely launched into his chosen career in construction, I went back into the field, this time in Central America to cover the civil wars. At 55 I retired. At 56 I was asked to write a book. At 57 I retired. At 58 I was asked to write a book. At 59 I retired...

I'm 71 now and darn it, this time I mean it. I'm retired.

Hello? Yes Minister.....

It must be something like this: You might be ready to give up on writing, but writing isn't ready to give you up.

I wrote my first story, called 'The Big Hat', in about the 4th grade. I can't remember what it was about, but I think it had something to do with a big hat. My teacher liked it so much that it was read out at the school assembly.

After that I don't remember doing much writing, other than English assignments and things like that. In Year 10 a friend an I started writing a novel together. I had the original idea and wrote the first chapter, and he liked it so much that he went ahead and wrote the final 300+ chapters, or something like that. I have no idea what that one was about.

About one year ago I decided that a 9-5 job wasn't for me as it took me away from my fiance and my daughter all day. I decided then that I was going to write a novel and do everything I could to make something of a career out of it. Life is too short to spend all your time doing something you're not passionate about.
So, I've been writing seriously for almost a year, and I absolutely love it. Hopefully the novel will be finished in another 6 months and then the real challenge begins.

Originally Posted by garza

There were many ages when I started writing. Here are a few.

My grandfather got me started writing poetry and short sketches before ever I started school. He died when I was ten but had laid the foundation. By age 12 I knew I wanted to be a writer. At 14 I began writing for two local newspapers. At 16 I was paying my way at university stringing for a dozen papers. At 21 I quit school without my phd and went to Southeast Asia where the Vietnam conflict was beginning to boil, kept up my old contacts, and added news syndicates. At 25 I returned to the U.S. where I fathered a child and became more involved in magazine writing, especially about the Civil Rights movement and the growing anti-war protests. At 32 I made a last trip to Asia, then was handed full custody of my eight-year-old son whose mother said 'I can't take it anymore'. At 42, with my son safely launched into his chosen career in construction, I went back into the field, this time in Central America to cover the civil wars. At 55 I retired. At 56 I was asked to write a book. At 57 I retired. At 58 I was asked to write a book. At 59 I retired...

I'm 71 now and darn it, this time I mean it. I'm retired.

Hello? Yes Minister.....

Garza I am impressed. I would have to had some of your experiences.

Originally Posted by Sunny

So I haven't been writing very long at all. But I feel like I've been doing it my whole life. I love it, and I can't imagine not doing it. ;0)

I know the feeling.

I've wanted to tell stories for as long as I can remember. The first independent work I remember was a comic strip called "Weirdo and Zord" that I started in second grade (I would have been 7 at the time). It followed two space pilots on various adventures and was pretty simplistic, but it was something. My next work was "Jared and Terry," a not-funny, not-well drawn copy of "Calvin and Hobbes" that starred me and one of my own stuffed animals at the time. I had maybe 40 double sided pages of it, but inexplicably threw it out one day when cleaning my room. Several more, shorter-lived comic strips followed; I'm sure I could dig them out of my drawings folders the next time I go to my mom's house.

After that came amateurish attempts at actual writing. There was a fantasy story about a couple of dwarfs that lasted maybe three pages, a sci-fi story about humans invading a distant planet from the aliens' point of view that didn't get past one page, and a lousy version of Star Wars called "Future Attack" that went for a few chapters.

My next efforts at breaking into the creative field came through game design. Collectible card games, board games, dice games, video games - if it had the word "game" in it, I tried to design one (or more). They were always based on my favorite game at the time, such as the original Star Wars CCG, or computer games like Descent and Colonization. No game got past the planning stage until high school, when I began my Reptoran series.

Labyrinth of Reptoran, Adventures in Reptoran, and World of Reptoran together were a conceptual roguelike RPG trilogy. I put more effort into that series than I had into anything else before. The initial concept came around freshman year in high school (14 years old) and lasted until junior year in college (20 years old). However, it was about that time that I realized I just wanted to tell a story, and having to wrap everything in programming just bogged the process down. With that in mind, I moved on to my first (and current) novel.


TL;DR SECTION
I've been designing my story since around April of 2007, and I actually started writing it in January of 2009. I've been working on it ever since. I guess that makes 20 the age I began real writing, although, as the above paragraphs indicate, the creative spirit was active well before that.

Almost exactly three years ago, give or take a few days.

candid petunia -Truth to tell, it's good to feel I'm still appreciated, and further, that I can still contribute.

Closet Writer - Sometimes I wish I could do it all over, but then I think, nah. It's almost time to write '-30-' on the page, put it on the wire, and get a long nap.

I was in my late 20s. I don't remember why I started. I think I was bored and looking for a new hobby. That was about 20 years ago. C.M.

Started around two years ago. Had a fling with fan fiction, then fell in love with fictional prose. Unfortunately, I fail to appreciate what poetry has to offer.