Writers' age

I started writing in high school, but it's only now that I'm cresting 40 that my writing is good enough to potentially publish. In the interim I've written my 1 million+ words, completed a trunk novel, etc.

Aerial

bob88 said:

And I know there's a ton of famous writers who actually started early, and we have some fifteen years old kids here on AW (which is great!) but they still seem to be the minority.

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If we exclude everyone under 15 (as a really, really rough approximation), the 15-24 age band accounts for about 24% of the world's population, and closer to 16% in first-world countries. So young 'uns being a minority seems like the way it would be on a forum such as AW, which is used by people of all ages* and is less teenager-heavy than, say, a Pokemon forum.

*The youngest AW user is only a baby. And he gives solid advice, too. Here's a recent crit he posted in SYW:

Waaahhhhh said:

Googoo gagga. Mama? I'm hungie. Narrator meanie. I go boom boom in potty. Mama? WAHHHHHH I HAVE TO GO WEEWEE. WAAAAAAH.

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I wrote my first novel when I was 15, and I can guarantee I was serious about my writing back then. I wanted a career of it, hoped I could pay my way through college with writing, would have a big bestseller before I was eighteen. You know, the normal things a teenager assumes.

I had Writers Market books and had picked out which publishers I would send my books too, and so on. Mostly insecurity kept me from ever really trying. The few times I'd submitted anything, I'd failed to get very far (and generally the friends I entered with were accepted, which reinforced my idea that I wasn't very good). I was terrified of sending out my book, revised it something like 9 times (and it still sucks lol), and tried to learn what I could and get brave enough to try it.

I went to college and grad school right out of that, though, and that cut so severely into my writing time that I didn't really get the opportunity. On top of that, one of my writing professors had said that while I was a great writer, he wasn't sure if I knew how to tell a story, which basically left me heartbroken. I was convinced I couldn't write, that I would never be able to, and that I just didn't have the natural talent to pull off a career.

I started writing silly things in grad school again, a couple of fanfics, that sort of thing, just to play around. Those were safe, in a way, because I wasn't doing anything with them, wasn't going to submit them, wasn't posting them online. I actually started to notice I was improving in certain areas. I was learning a bit more about story from a good friend I wrote with, and my dialogue was actually getting decent, and overall I was starting to feel more confident.

A couple of years later, I had a dream that I woke up from and just knew I had to write. The main character was too amazing, and I loved the concept, and I thought it would make a great story. So I thought back to what my professor had told me and realized that if plot was my weakness, I was going to have to learn a way to get around that. I started outlining, and it made a huge difference. I worked on that book for a little over a year, and when I was finished I knew I had to try to have it published.

That one didn't get me an agent, but the next one did, and I learned so much not only from that one book and actively trying to improve my weaknesses, but also from this site and the other blogs and industry information on the internet.

So I guess the moral of my story is that I always knew what I wanted, but lack of confidence always kept me from it more than anything, and the most important element of becoming a better writer is to not get discouraged by criticism, but to look at it objectively and recognize it for what it is: a way to help you improve.

ETA: I don't have kids yet, but I'm anticipating having to scale back once I do. Babies especially require so much energy and time that it's hard to imagine stressing myself out to get a book done with an infant.

I've been writing since I was a kid, wrote my first "novella" when I was around 9-10. But it wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I realized I wasn't the world's next, great author and I needed to get a handle on self-editing, before my work would be close to publishable.

By then I already had kids.

I'm not cresting 40 and my kids aren't grown yet, but I agree with everything aerial and Maryn said.

I don't multitask well, so the combination of work, children, marriage, extended family responsibilities and a house were just too much for me to be able to focus on writing. I was only really able to concentrate on it after my youngest was in kindergarten. Other people can juggle all those things. I couldn't.

I wanted to be a 'serious' writer from high school on - but I had to earn a living first. Then, as other's mentioned, lack of confidence. When I became a single parent, the 'pipe dream' got put on hold for decades. Now, at 57, I've been into the 'serious writing' bit for about 5-6 years, and into the wanting to get published for a little over a year. I wish I hadn't denied myself for so long, but like I say, it was just a pipe dream back then.

((shadowwalker))) hang in there.

I'm 28, and I have a few things published. I might be starting the family life very shortly and I sincerely hope that my writing career doesn't get put on hold for 18+ years...it might sound selfish, and not very practical, but I will try to do both if I can.

I'm only 21 and hoping to be a serious author, but still pretty insecure about it (as I'm reading a lot of you were around my age). Been writing in general since 12, writing constantly since 16, but mostly in the fanfiction universe. Still, my writing has improved greatly since then (I still hold on to my old fanfiction and just looking at 3 years ago, I can hardly believe I used to write that bad). I figure if I keep consistently writing, even if it's just fanfiction and even if it's limited by university, I could get somewhere eventually

I guess I'd been planning it since college.
I pursued creative writing and interpersonal communications in undergrad, and fiction was always my passion. But I'd been on my own since senior year of high school and I paid for college myself, getting into a good chunk of debt.
Before I even graduated, I had to make sure I was financially secure.
Fortunately, I started off at a good-sized newpaper and, within a few years, was making a pretty good salary. About six years in, I started on my master's in creative writing. I just happened to finish my degree about the same time we moved across the country and I had my first child.
The timing was right so I quit journalism and started focusing on fiction (along with freelancing, teaching and social networking jobs whenever I felt guilty about not earning money.).
I've completed two novels and published a few short stories, but I really feel that next year will be my year. Our youngest two (twins) will start kindergarten and, hopefully, I'll be able to devote more time to writing.
I'm 46 now. I'm not sure I would have had the patience for the business side of things had I started younger.

I am so glad you asked. For me, it was undeniably an almost-30th birthday crisis. (so was my ill-fated marriage, but that's another, and sadder, story.) I was working some danged office job, not using my brain for much at all, bored, and I thought, "holy %#(! is this all my life is going to be? Forever? I'm almost 30. So, 45 more dull years like this? Eek!" And I got down to serious writing. First genre publication at 33, first top-level lit journal pub at 36, long listed for a big lit short story award at 36, won a minor lit award at 40. No pubbed novel yet, but maybe one day.

Also, I have to say, my writing at 29 to 31 sucked. Sucked in a major, major way. Sucked so you could hear the sucking sounds a continent away. Only my innate doggedness pushed me through that period to where I started improving.

I'm 20, and in my efforts to avoid the problem you mentioned I'm probably creating a whole 'nother one for myself. I'd love to have one published novel under my belt before I'm responsible for the life of a one-foot tall human being, but the universe has a way of foiling my plans if I announce them too loudly. In the meantime, I will probably think I'm a failure at life if I don't get something published before I'm 30. Happy medium? Impossible.

Well... I started writing again BECAUSE I had a young family. My husband used to work nights and my girls went to bed at 7. I had to do something to kill time (besides, you know, clean). I've always loved writing; used to write a lot of fanfics.

Boredom (and love of writing) led to blogging. Blogging led to more blogging. More blogging led to writing fiction. After I had baby #3 a mommy on a mommy board I was on told me about Nanowrimo. I'd ALWAYS wanted to write a novel! I had just finished the BIble in 90 days challenge (in 78 days!) and decided that nothing could stop me from attaining a goal. So... I signed up... And I wrote And I finished.

I've edited, submitted, wrote some more. I write for a Christian magazine at times. I still have my blogs, and I'm working on a new novel.

So, writing, for me, started because I had a family-- and free time in the evenings-- and the need to be creative. I absolutely love it!

(I'm 31 with kids 6, 5, and 22 months btw)

bob88 said:

The question is, at what age did you take it really seriously? I mean, as a possible career. When did you subscribe to a writing forum / magazine? joined a writing group? went to a workshop or a conference? Researched the world how to do everything right, from writing techniques to the specific questions you should ask the agent comes the much wished for phone call?

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Well, I started joining critique groups while in college and took at least one creative writing course while I was there. I started attending workshops in my early thirties (actually, I was 29 for the first one) once I had the money, and have slowly been learning about the publishing industry ever since. There were definitely some years in there when my kids were small or there were other life crises going on that I didn't write because I was just too exhausted, but I've always come back to it.

That said, I doubt writing will ever be my career. I already have a career as an engineer. I like my job and I get paid very well for doing it. I'm also married and raising 4 kids. I love writing, but I can't see ever doing only that.

Aerial

bob88 said:

The question is, at what age did you take it really seriously? I mean, as a possible career. When did you subscribe to a writing forum / magazine? joined a writing group? went to a workshop or a conference? Researched the world how to do everything right, from writing techniques to the specific questions you should ask the agent comes the much wished for phone call?

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24. I started 2.5 years after I finished school, and it was because I was massively frustrated with my life.

I was working some danged office job, not using my brain for much at all, bored, and I thought, "holy %#(! is this all my life is going to be? Forever? I'm almost 30. So, 45 more dull years like this? Eek!"

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I had this moment my last year of college, and then again two years later when I was working the manual labor job that I had fallen into after ditching the whole grad school professorial idea.

(I'm four years out of college now and working the same type of job. Until the end of the month. Then I'm unemployed! Huzzzaaahhhh) (Speaking of huzzah, does anyone know what sorts of skills renaissance fairs require in their employees...? I'm good at shoveling poop and saying huzzah but I'm not sure that's enough)

Anyway. Neither of those moments led to me becoming a Serious Writer, just writing. I've always written like a fiend, but really, there was nothing of import or substance or actual plotting until about a year ago. Technically, the idea started in college, but I assumed I was too big a moron and it was too impractical a career anyway, especially for a moron. (Of course, being an anthropologist is SUPER practical, NOT)

Then, blah blah blah, job dissatisfaction, life dissatisfaction, family problems, quit one job after another and still somehow wound up in the same place time after time, all the while roiling in existential crisis and crippling self-loathing and "what do I do where am I going I am not being productive enough whine whine barfballs maybe I should have just been an anthropologist I am an asswipe". Then I finally reached the state of Fuck Everything, and I frolicked off to Asia for a few weeks and told everything it could blow me and I did nothing but read and write and write and read some more and learn to scuba dive and get hit on by drunk Dutch people and watch National Geographic and eat Pringles until I threw up and whatever. For once, I did not care about anything except being happy, and the loathing dropped away and that's when I decided I could be a Serious Writer.

Of course, all that neurotic bullplop came back the moment I set foot on home soil, but the writing thing was buried deep in me by then. Like a tapeworm.

I'm still looking for some other career to have for practical purposes that does not suck out my burbly soul-juices, but I hope that someday writing can be the Real One. Unless I lose focus again and change my mind. Hurrhurrhurr

I imagine a lot of us have stopped and started along the way.

Decided to be a writer when I was about twelve. Was working on my first novel when I was 15, writing about a couple thousand words a day. Family problems and arson derailed me for a few years. Started again in my twenties; family problems and, again, arson derailed me. Started again at about thirty; marriage problems derailed me.

Or, rather, I let those things derail me. Shouldn't have. Three years ago I lost my job, and decided to get serious about writing before the cold hand of death reaches me. Now I'm 51, still unemployed, still writing.

I guess the biggest thing is being told:

1) don't try to make a living writing, so don't quit your day job

2) it's not a walk in the park to get picked up for publication, so don't put your eggs in one basket - have a fall back

And you still had to eat, pay rent, keep the lights on. Takes money and jobs give money. Jobs also use energy, as do laundry, dishes, dinner, errands, children if you decide on a family....

It also doesn't benefit from telling yourself 'well, when I have time, when I have the money, when I have the energy, when I'm inspired, when I have the privacy/space/quiet/right equipment' because those vaguely impossible conditions are hard to meet and so they keep getting put off...until you're older in life, you turn around and look back and think 'ohgod, did I just spend all that time waiting for the impossibly perfect conditions?'

Then you get to work and start writing, knowing (hopefully) what it is that you're heading into, knowing the sacrifices you'll have to make...and being okay with it.

I'm like kaitie in having been serious about it from very young. I wrote my first novel at 11-12 and during and after that I was reading every writing book the library had. At 13 I had a Writer's Market and books on manuscript formatting and query letter writing. I actually got a request off a query letter from a nyc publisher (without mentioning my age) but of course the novel was a piece of crap. I went to occasional talks by writers and submitted the first part of my novel to a writer-in-residence at the library who was doing critiques. Eventually I realized I needed more work to have a truly worthy debut and stopped pursuing publishing, though I kept reading writing books etc. I never had any doubt I'd be published, though I wasn't so naive as to think I'd make a living off it.

Anyway, university and life in general drew me away from writing for a couple years and I only came back last year-- and I'm as serious as it's possible to be. I'm still just 24, no career yet (off to grad school), no kids, not married or even in a relationship, so I want to make the most of this time before those things do start to make demands. I don't actually want to make a living off writing-- I want awards and acclaim, sure, but I'd go crazy just writing. So hopefully it will work out okay as I start Adult Life....

I'm only 21 going on 22 in August. I wrote my first novel at 14 and started subbing that and picture books to agents and publishers out of the Writer's Market by fifteen. Of course, it was unpublishable. But I took a writing course my senior year of high school and then went on to do Creative Writing for undergrad. I've had several stories published, even got paid for one, since I was 19. I've written a whole bunch of novels (one of which I'm querying right now) and am writing another at the moment. (I'm currently unemployed and recently graduated, so I'm trying to take advantage of this as much as possible.)

I do feel like, in a lot of ways, I tend to be more of an exception though. A vast majority of the people in my undergrad program--and it's a really serious undergrad writing program--didn't write all that much. I think it's easy to fall into the mentality that we have all the time in the world and this is a time to have fun, or get careers sorted out, or whatever. And then things like families and jobs sneak up on people and well... That seems plausible, right?

That's my two cents. Yes, there are a lot of writers who aren't, say, in their 20s and got "serious" about writing a little later. But I also think that there's a fair bit of people like me who have been going at their writing careers hard since their teens or 20s.

Life happens. Experience happens. Lack of confidence happens. I wrote a lot when I was younger, but it was all s***. All of it. I had no classes. No training. No critiquing from friends/family. No sense of what I was doing at all.

For me, it just took longer.

For both my BA and my MFA, the younger writers (early to mid 20s) had some talent, but they all seemed to lack self-awareness as writers. Furthermore, they were stuck in "safe mode."

I only write in 3rd person past.
I only write in 1st person.
I only write about people doing drugs.
I only write about abused men/women.

If it was one, big poker tournament, they'd have given away their tells on hand 2.

The older students had a hell of a lot more confidence and willingness to throw something away and start all over again. The younger crowd seemed to have a VERY hard time letting something go, revising, reworking. There were two other "older" students in my MFA program and we were writing the craziest, most awesome stuff. We took major risks. The young'ins seemed to tell the same story over and over and over again. Carefully. With nice, neat, tidy grammar.

Now, I'm not saying this is "truth" for everyone. It was my personal experience in both my BA and MFA programs. But, I needed to be at that "to hell with it, I'm throwing a hail Mary" place in life to grow as a writer. The other, younger, writers, grew in other ways and by the end of the program . . . holy cow. I was utterly amazed at the writers they had become.

Even so . . . the older crew had more prominent and frequent growth spurts and I think it's because they were willing to risk it. Sure, I'll turn in a story told in 2nd person plural. Ya'll dig that. Ya'll think that's the cat's meow. Or, I'll tell a story with a 100% objective POV, no interiority whatsoever. Or, some of us might even meet in secret and write romance stories and send them off under pen names to New Love Stories Magazine and get a few published (for $300).

It could have been the MFA program itself. The younger folks took themselves so super seriously that it was often painful to watch them get critiqued.

Life had to "tenderize" me, or lighten me up. I'm not sure which one. Maybe both.

Again, these are my experiences. There was a 22 year old in the MFA program who blew us ALL away with her maturity, thoughtfulness, and eye for detail. She didn't have the "deer in headlights" issues that her other younger writers had. She played. She had fun. She took things seriously when she needed to, and by the end, she'd published more work in her "group" than anyone else.

I dunno if that helps. Maybe it's just a glimps into a few situations. Maybe it helps people. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe someone is about to hurl their shoe at me through their computer screen. Take it as you will.

And regardless of what age you are, never forget that writing should be fun too, and that failing only makes us stronger. And, it's okay to go against what the borg collective tells you. Read some Vonnegut for the love of God. It's good medicine for any young writer.