Writers' age

Silver-Midnight · Jun 10, 2012

Well, me, I'm 20 now. I've been writing since I was in high school. However, I wasn't writing constantly. It was more "off and on" than anything. I started off with fan fiction. I wrote a few short stories mostly, maybe one novella. However, they all sucked. :ROFL:

Even though I still write fan fiction, shortly I started moving toward writing original fiction. So far, I haven't written a full length novel/novella that's original fiction I think. I've gotten close but I haven't reached that goal yet. I'm working toward it though.

I haven't been published yet. And honestly, I'm really thinking about waiting a few more years before I try to publish anything. I know that a person really can't have a "perfect first draft" or anything like that. However, I think I need more experience at both writing consistently/constantly, time to build my skills in general, and more time to develop that belief/confidence in myself.

Plus, on top of writing, I'm also in college. And no offense to anyone here, but that takes more priority than my writing. That's not to say that I don't like it; I do. However, for me, personally, school is more important.

PEBKAC2 · Jun 10, 2012

oh, I had plans. I was going to graduate, work my butt off over the summer and early fall to save as much money as I could so that I could move to Colorado in the late fall and spend at least one season as a ski bum while finishing up my novel.

Instead I had the most beautiful baby girl you could ever imagine and worked my tail off nailing down a decent job in the software industry to support my new family. A big chunk of my job is writing, and I'm well paid for it, but it's not the kind of writing I was shooting for.

I hadn't written any fiction in years even though I kept meaning to get around to it. But my daughter took an interest in writing and that jumpstarted things for me. Now I write when I can carve out the time.

rynthewin · Jun 10, 2012

I'm 22, and I have to say that I've wanted to write for as long as I can remember. Wrote my first "novel" a twelve and worked on it for 5 years before giving up, while on the side I wrote a lot of fanfiction. I went into college pursuing a Creative Writing degree, but I quickly changed my major. College was three years of doing everything but writing. I got back into writing this year and, while I feel like I've regressed as a writer, I'm writing pretty consistently. I want to be published, but I don't want it to be my career. I have a deep love for psychology and I hope to eventually become a psychologist. I guess since I have no intentions of having a family of my own, it won't be too difficult to work in my job and writing.

lauralam · Jun 10, 2012

I wrote very inconsistently in high school. I studied creative writing in college.

I'm an exception. I wrote a book when I was 21, got a full request when I was 22 from the first and only publisher I sent it to, got a revise and resubmit because I subbed the first draft of my first novel (I thought fixing typos meant editing, sigh), got accepted when I was 23, and I'll be 24 by the time it hits the shelves.

I'm still a bit shocked.

shockandawe232 · Jun 10, 2012

I started blogging when I turned 18 and this winter I started writing novels/short stories/poems. I am 20 now

Niiicola · Jun 10, 2012

I always wrote since I was a little kid but it never occurred to me that I might actually be able to pull off an entire novel. I studied translation in college because I loved language and writing so much but figured I'd be much better suited to writing someone else's ideas. Then a translating job turned into an editing job, and I spent the next eight years prettying up other people's writing (with not much payoff or a ton of satisfaction).

Then I had a baby. And my life was so utterly altered that I got this whole new perspective on everything. I came up with an idea for a novel and jumped straight into it and didn't stop until it was done. And I'm never looking back again.

SomethingOrOther · Jun 10, 2012

I'm 21, which is five years older than you would've guessed

.

I study and practice my butt off. Yesterday was a ~16-hour day, which is typical for me.

I'm not in a rush to be published.

This post is short and fragmented because the gaps between the fragments are all the things I'm unsure of, all the things I'm undecided on, and all the things I don't know. I'm very confused.

aikigypsy · Jun 10, 2012

Well, you could say I started writing in high school, but for me there's been a big difference in my writing with each passing decade. When I think about my writing career I never consider the stuff I wrote as a teenager. I wrote a novella in my early 20s, and was part of a local writers group, so I guess I was getting some idea about feedback then, but it was a novella, so it didn't get very far.

I knew that I wanted to be a writer but for me it was better to do miscellaneous, flexible, menial jobs than to try to get into another serious career. It took 5 years of graduate school for me to figure that one out.

I wrote a lot in my 30s, mostly a series of fantasy novels which I sent out some query letters for. I think, in retrospect, that the work just wasn't quite there yet. I did some writing workshops, short term things, and got really tired of local writing groups' "aren't we all brilliant" theme. Had some crises, got pregnant, had baby, moved across the Atlantic, etc. Started writing again. Moved home. Switched from writing fiction to just doing newspaper articles (much easier than fiction!) had another baby, moved again...

Now that I'm in my 40s and settled, I hope my writing moves up a notch like it did from childhood to teens, teens to 20s, and 20s to 30s. For the first time in my life, I have a really stable living situation and a personal life that I'm pretty happy with. Time is scarce, but once the little guy starts preschool (he's 21 months now), watch out! In the meantime, I'm doing as much as I can squeeze in.

bob88 · Jun 11, 2012

Thank you all for sharing your life stories. It's very encouraging to see how people keep struggling for something they love and enjoy.

As for me, I guess I'm the real exception here. Writing was never my dream.

Back in high school I wrote a 5-pages satire on religion, as an assignment. Never really cared about it, I just did it for the grade. Then one day in college, when I was 20, I cleaned up my computer and stumbled on that old word file. I read it again, and thought, hey I can write! (Of course I was severely hallucinating; that story was a 5-pages long compilation of horse****, one crappy sentence after another

) So, for some reason, I decided I could make it publishable. Not because I wanted to be a writer; because I wanted people to read it. I think I just wanted to stick it up to Jewish religion, which I grew to despise. I think this is also the reason why I decided to write in English, and not in Hebrew or Russian - my native languages. I didn't care about the writing itself, I just wanted a bigger impact; to reach more people; to show more people what foolish ideas stand at the base of organised religion.

Now I'm 24, and I want to believe I matured a bit. I no longer want to "stick it up" to religion, but in the process of rewriting this short story into a novel I discovered I really enjoy writing. I changed, from a person who has only one story in him, to someone who can think of three new ideas for novels during a single shower (isn't that where most people go to think?

).

As for the sacrifices, I think they would always be there. I have to earn a living, but then again, I'll have to do it for the next forty years, too. I study in Israel's most demanding university, but you know what? I realized I could stretch my degree a bit. Complete it in six years, instead of five, and make room for the writing. It's not the end of the world. I also happened to be in a very demanding relationship in those years. I used to hang out with my girlfriend, go to bed, and sneak out of it the moment she fell asleep. It cost me a couple of good fights, but I think it's worth it. Kids are obviously something that shouldn't be compromised this way, but luckily for my writing there are none of those yet in my horizon.

So, thanks again for sharing, and write on!

swvaughn · Jun 11, 2012

I'm 36 and... well. I'm 36. Hmm. I had to do some maths there to figure that out... and I could be wrong, because I'm bad at maths.

Can't say I've been terribly successful with writing so far since I started for serious (back, oh, many years ago). But it's what I do, and I have completed many novels, and some of them have been published.

If I can do it, you can do it...

fireluxlou · Jun 11, 2012

I'm 22 and I feel that improving my writing is my main goal before being published. Plus life is too hectic with studying right now and life for me to seriously write what I want. After studying and work and just things happening in my life I feel worn out and unable too. Aware that this will probably happen throughout but I'm not currently in a frame of mind that allows me to just concentrate on it. So bit by bit.

Phaeal · Jun 11, 2012

Dunno. Seems to me that young people have never in history had so many opportunities to write, to get advice, to share their writing:

1. Advice and crit groups online.
2. NaNoWriMo (with its school programs.)
3. Easily disseminated fan & original fic.
4. Plenty of young published authors as role models.
5. Super-easy self-publishing.
6. Vastly improved technology -- those who have never struggled OF NECESSITY with cranky typewriters, snarled ribbons, White-Out, and carbon paper can't viscerally appreciate the personal computer and word processing programs.

7. Research, easy-peasy with teh Webz.

And as far as I can see, tons of young people are taking advantage of all these opportunities. Hell, I know personally three GRADE SCHOOLERS who've written novels (OK, maybe novellas) as part of their class work.

Where young writers may be disadvantaged today is in expectations of early and easy success. Pump out a hundred query letters? No problem. Get one of those queries to hook an agent -- ah, there's the rub.

Back in the day, we were so preoccupied with escaping mammoths and dire wolves, we didn't even know what an agent was! S'true, s'true....

jaksen · Jun 11, 2012

I wrote my first novel when I was 17, but I didn't have anything significant published until age 39. In the years in between I wrote every day, more novels, short stories, plays. But I didn't show them to anyone.

It wasn't until age 39, when I picked up a copy of a short story magazine - and said, I can do that, I'm always doing that, why not get paid for it? - that I sent a story to a magazine and sold it.

Yes, I had a husband I put through college. I had to work from an early age. (I come from working class folk.) I had three children; the third is both mentally challenged and autistic, but I also wrote every day.

Thing is, I just never thought anyone would buy anything I wrote even though high school and college teachers all said: you should be a writer.

Yeah, right, with bills to pay and a husband to support and then three children. Dream on. I had to work to support the family.

Now I get paid for some of my writing, enough to support a second home, but still, I wish I'd started sending some of my stories off when I was in my twenties.

Mharvey · Jun 11, 2012

Terry Goodkind, best selling novelist, published his first work at 46. Suzanne Collins - Hunger Games - published her first novel at 41. Christopher Paolini, best selling novelist, published his first at 19.

With that serving as the usual caveat that there's many exceptions to any rule, everything I've learned from my research and my colleagues suggest the average practicing writer with career ambitions tends to develop into a publishable style by the age of 35-40.

thebloodfiend · Jun 11, 2012

I wrote my first novel when I was 14. It sucked. Since then, I've written about ten or so novels/novellas. I've published a short story, written a million of them, and I'm about to start submitting another. I'm also in the middle of editing a novel, which I'll probably send off to agents in late July, early August. I've queried before and it was a terrible experience. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. That was two years ago. Since then, I've learned a lot. Apparently, my writing is somewhat publishable, so I'm hoping I can edit my current MS into something an agent would want to rep. It's got less "concept" than the one that got an author request to show to her agent, but I'm more attached to it.

btw, I'm eighteen and I'd love to get an agent before I turn nineteen. I know it's not a race, but doing it now, rather than later -- when ROTC training starts -- would be greatly beneficial, schedule wise.

CJ Knightrey · Jun 11, 2012

I'm 19 (well, will be in about a week) and can't really say I have many writing achievments to brag about. I did enter a short story contest in high school and got first place, but nothing outside of that.

My path to writing has been a little odd, and maybe a little different then most. I started reading very early, but once I got into elemetary school I refused to read even the textbooks and the thought of writing anything other then my homework would make me laugh. But a very good friend of mine introduced me to 'Warrior' series by Erin Hunter. I was very reluctant at first. This was in fifth grade and it would have been the longest book I had ever read, but she was my best friend and she wanted someone to talk to about it, so I said 'fine, what the hell.' As soon as I had started I couldn't put it down. It reminded me of how much I loved stories and characters and the written word. The next year that same friend and I started writing a book together. It was complete and utter shit, 180+ pages of it, but it was the most fun I had ever had.

Needless to say since then I've been writing and reading as much as I can. I've written (or attempted) over five books, my current one behind the only one that I have managed to reach 20,000 words

I really hope the have this novel finished this year and be published by 22. Why 22? No idea, it's just always what I invisioned.

blacbird · Jun 11, 2012

You're never too young.

Too old is another matter, at least in the eyes of many agents and editors.

caw

Phaeal · Jun 12, 2012

blacbird said:
You're never too young.

Too old is another matter, at least in the eyes of many agents and editors.

caw

Not mine, fortunately.

Ohgodaspider · Jun 13, 2012

I'm 22, I began writing when I was 18/19. Went off to college, barely wrote. Left college, found a job, forced to move. It's only now that I can start thinking about it seriously, but I have so much on my plate; finish college, get a steady job, get my own place, get a car.To compound this i have terrible add and cannot medicate for it.

Soletaken · Jun 14, 2012

Currently 27.

Story ideas have been popping into my head since as far as I can remember. Although I wrote some of them down, I didn't take them too seriously.

About 2-3 years ago I began fleshing out a magic system/universe that a lot of my previous ideas were centered around. I don't really remember why I stopped. I think when I sat down to write the actual story, I just couldn't bring myself to type anything out.

Since then I've been busy with university. About 2.5 months ago the story and world reached critical mass in my head. I started refining my previous ideas and figuring out the specifics: character, plot, etc.. For a month and a half I alternated between plotting the story and reading up on writing (Story Engineering helped me bring it all together).

Three weeks ago I forced myself to sit down and start writing the actual story.

CaroGirl · Jun 14, 2012

I've written always and forever. Since I can remember, I've written and had stories that I told in my head. But, like many, I felt I had obligations to fulfill as a young person. I left creative writing on the back-burner while I built a solid education (BAH in English literature; diploma in Journalism) and a solid career as a technical writer. I also got married and had two children, which took up a lot of my life.

I started writing seriously about 8 years ago. I remember the moment. I still have the story I wrote (although I'm afraid to read it in case it sucks monkey balls). After that, I wrote more and more, took a writing course, formed a critique group, joined online writing sites, and so on. I've now written 5 novels and numerous short stories.

Occasionally I wish I'd started writing creatively earlier than I did, but I don't have any real regret about it. I'm proud of my other accomplishments too.

Beachgirl · Jun 14, 2012

I only started taking it seriously about 4 months ago. I finished reading a book, looked at my husband and said "I can write better than this!". So I sat down at my computer and started writing and it just clicked. Miraculously, four weeks later I had an offer from a publisher in hand.

I always enjoyed writing. When teachers assigned essays, I did a little happy dance while my friends moaned. I can't tell you how many essays I acted as ghost writer for. I wrote the obligatory teenaged girl flowery purple prose poetry and short stories. I was an editor on my high school yearbook staff.

But never did I even consider writing to be something I would do as a career. I got a job, got married, had a kid and did a lot of growing up. When I was 32, I decided to go back to college to finish my degree. I started a whole new career at 37, doing things I never thought I could do. It gave me a lot of confidence, not to mention some great stories to use in my books (dodging alligators and snakes, anyone?).

I love my day job (and my income) and would have to make a boat-load of money writing to give it up. But at the age of 45 I am, finally, taking writing seriously as an additional career.

Shara · Jun 15, 2012

I would say it's mostly because to be a decent writer you have to learn how to write well.

I was writing stories from the time I learned how to write. I knew by the age of 10 I wanted to be a published novelist. I wrote my first novel at 11. But it really wasn't very good - I wanted to tell a story, but I had no concept of structure, or pace, or how to tell a story well. These things I learned over time, through reading other people's stories and talking to other writers.

And all the way through school whenever I told anyone I wanted to be a writer they would tell me, "there's no money in that. You have to get a real job."

I had my first short story accepted when I was 19. Decided I was going to be a published novelist by 30. It didn't happen; I just piled up rejection slips. I bumped the age target to 40. As I approached 40 I thought I would have to bump it back to 50, but then a couple of months before my 40th birthday I received my first novel publishing contract.

And all this time later I realise all those grown-ups were right - I still have the day job; in spite of having three published books now I can't earn a living off my royalties so I have to fit the writing around the day job, which often means getting up at 5:30am to write before work.

Forging a career as a writer takes a long time, to build up experience, skill and a reputation for yourself. You've also got to have faith in your own work amidst relentless rejection, and that requires the kind of confidence that comes only with life experience.

I'm not saying there aren't any amazing 14-year-old writers out there, but it takes more than just the desire to write to be a writer, and that's why most people appear to be a little older when they decide it's time to make a serious go of it.

Shara

comped · Jun 15, 2012

I'm 15 (sophmore next fall), and I've got a publisher interested in a play I wrote.

comped

Jessica_312 · Jun 15, 2012

This is an interesting question.

I've been writing stories pretty much from the age I was old enough to write. I've wanted to be a writer my whole life, to create stories. I've been a writer in every aspect - I've done journalism, technical writing (my current profession), and of course creative writing. Technical Writing is my current job, but of course creative writing is my passion.

I guess I've never really been all that confident in my writing abilities. Like, I thought I was good, but never good enough for publication, you know? It's only recently I've started to gain more confidence in my abilities. Furthermore, I blame laziness. I've started countless novels only to get a few chapters in, shelve them, and never come back. It wasn't until I graduated college that I found a new determination to finish the novels I'd started. I don't know why or where it came from, it just did. I'm 26 now and have my first truly finished novel, and I'm pretty proud of myself for having finished.

Sorry for the rambling and babbling LOL

ETA: @comped. Congratulations! At 15 that is very impressive, best of luck to you!

Writers' age

Will crit for food.

Plotting Princess

Moonshade

Twitchy

-

Not writing as much as he should be

adrift

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.

Caped Codder

Liker Of Happy Things

Cory

She Who Constantly Changes Avatars

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.

Living the dream

Not easily managed

Fix it in the Rewrite

Why Me Worry?