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Joined: 7/10/2011
Posts: 7
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Ever writer has their own story of why they write, but what was it that first brought you to it? Was it a particular book that you read as a child (or adult) that sparked you into the field of writing? Was it a mentor, teacher, friend or parent that brought you to writing? Was it a traumatic point in your life? A happy time in life? Or you just had a story to tell?
Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of Tarzan, among others, worked as a pencil sharpener (back when pencils were the lifeblood of society). As he spent his days sharpening, he read short stories from the action magazines, and thought, "I can do better." He started writing, and sent his work off, and made a life career out of it.
So what's your story? What brought you to writing? What was the impetus behind your passion?
Hunter Liguore http://skytalewriter.com/index.php
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Joined: 3/16/2011
Posts: 279
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I fell into into by accident.
The only writing done in High School was assignments and satirical articles for the school paper that I tried to pass off as legit. There were a few years of competitions with impromptu speaking and prepared public speaking which required making stuff up off the cuff.
I went to college as a biology/veterinary major and worked at Barnes and Noble the entire time. It kills me now to think of all the events I worked/hosted as an event coordinator and the missed networking opportunities. The only creative outlet I had was DM'ing for the college Dungeons and Dragons group.
A friend asked for help with some dialog on a screenplay and I ended up as a script doctor for the first time. After that, I figured that maybe I could actually carry off this mad writing idea.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 4
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I started writing in High School, in the early sixties. I loved science fiction and wanted to create my own. Later, absorbed into the real world of education, work and raising a family, I let the dream slip away. Eight years ago, I found myself out of work. With time on my hands, I began writing again, and I was terrible. I found I didn't know the English language. I've been working at it since, and I think I've improved. I've sold a few stories and just got Honorable Mention for the 2nd quarter WOTF contest. In a nutshell, it makes me happy.
Larry
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Joined: 4/28/2011
Posts: 3
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For me, it was all about the story. I was a big daydreamer as a kid and would constantly create stories in my head. That has never stopped. As I grew older (by older, I mean teen years), I found pleasure in reading other's stories. Writing is simply a means to convey the stories...and it is cheap to produce. Anything with a great story, I love - film, television, plays, crazy guy in the alley, etc. Still, a well-written story trumps all other mediums.
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Joined: 5/10/2011
Posts: 69
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I love books. I can't remember not loving books.But though I grew up with my nose regularaly stuck in a book, it never occured to me to write one. I have always written poetry which I suppose is its own kind of *fiction* but didn't actually write a story of any kind until my 30's. (I'm 33.) I have had so many ideas for stories, and wrote a couple of scenes in my playwriting classes in college, but didn't really have the guts to write them down. After all, I have no formal training, "Who am I to think I could..."
Or so I had always thought.
It took a swift kick in the a$# from my hubby to get me to sit down and put myself out there.
And now I know...I am a writer. A storyteller. No matter what happens, I will always write.
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Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
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Its strange, I started writing before I knew the alphabet. My mother would buy spiral bound notebooks instead of coloring books because my brother and I would just scribble all over them anyway. We would sit on the floor with a box of crayons, but instead of scribbling all over the the page like most kids I would "write" on the lines. I filled pages and pages of lined notebooks with little scribbles thinking that they were words. In kindergarten and elementary school my teachers would have to take my paper away from me because I would just sit there and write. My parents said I was going to be an author, I loved writing and books that much.
Instead I wanted to be an artist. In middle school and high school I pushed writing aside to paint and draw. I was considered to be "not the best, but you belong," material when I was around other artists. Even those better than me liked my work. I thought I was going to do art for the rest of my life. Then my freshman year of college ended. I had been working on my writing as a side hobby off and on, never completely giving it up. I started to share this novel I was working on with my uncle and he said it had potential. That is when it became serious. Even my papers my professors said were fantastic. I could write.
Now I do only writing, not having done any art in almost 4 years, but I plan to start again. I want to create one pagers (a kind of title page) to go with all my stories. I just have to work the rust out of my system, but its hard to get started making art with paint when I've been making art with words for so long. Currently I'm working on a novel and numerous short stories in between being absorbed by a good show or movie. I'm trying to train my muse again so I can write more consistently. I love words. I LOVE words, and I want them to be a part of my life.
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Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
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@KS Brown: I knew I couldn't be the only one! Its good to know your parents allowed you to follow your interest like mine did. Support is precious. The only problem I had with my practice was that I would have to fish my crayons out of my brother's legos some times. Heh. Now he's going to school to be a mechanic. Figures.
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Joined: 3/16/2011
Posts: 214
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Hmm. I started out as a reporter. Your basic who, when, what, where. That's what I did to make $$ in college. Then I studied with a pianist named Jeannette Haien shortly before her death — I was in the performance sequence. She was also a novelist. I remember having a couple of conversations with her about the connection between music and writing. I can't recall her exact words, but she basically told me that she believed that classical musicians had an innate understanding of form — beginnings, transitions, climaxes and resolutions (oh, and use of motives) — that made storytelling almost second nature.
I hadn't really considered writing fiction before. Well, not seriously. But I started writing short stories, enrolled in creative writing classes to fulfill my electives and stuck with it. 
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 244
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I blogged about it a few weeks ago, but in essence, I stumbled into it in a manner of speaking. I started off thinking I'd write a screenplay for an animated movie (totally had the cast laid out in my head, too). I think somewhere along the way I came across the name that inspired the entire setting and story of my first (which became my second completed) novel and the screenplay got abandoned. I dove headfirst into world-building without the faintest idea of what I was getting into.
Almost a decade later I've written four novels and am working on my fifth and soon to query for the first time ever. (And I have another book in queue to research and plot after I finish the first draft of the current WiP.)
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