What inspired you to begin to write?

If I can't go and live in an exciting fantasy world, the next best thing is to write about one. I think writing was really an extension of daydreaming for me.

For me, it was the characters and worlds that have always been in my head, combined with more recent story ideas. Like KiwiChick said - an extension of daydreaming.

A friend who was critiquing my poetry (really bad poetry) looked at me one day-- I think I was babbling something about some story that affected me-- and said:

"Why don't YOU write a novel?"

I laughed at her question, though she was serious in a twinkling-sort of way. Then two weeks later, I woke up with a very vivid MC in my head and began asking who the heck he was, and what was his story?
And took it from there.

For me, it's because I'm not a very expressive person, so there's no way for me to get all these deep-seeded feelings out of me. Therefore, I use my writing to convey these feelings in a subliminal sort of way. Another reason is because I like to day dream a lot, and I don't want my imagination to lay waste.

why?

Money. I read an article wherein Robert Heinlein said he write his first short story in order to pay an overdue bill. I had my own overdue bills. It seemed to me that if he could do it, I could at least try it. So I tried it.

I sat down and wrote a story in a couple of days, sent it to a magazine, and they sent me a check for almost as much money as my day job paid in a month. I wrote a couple more quick stories, and they also sold. Then I wrote a novel and it sold. Been at it ever since.

I attended a Montessori elementary school and it's a standard part of their curriculum to ask students to write fiction. Among other things I recall writing a myth about the constellation Draco and a short illustrated book about a show-jumping horse. I always made up and acted out stories with my plastic horses. It didn't occurr to me that I could write real novels until I was in 8th grade though. At that point I started writing a science fiction coming-of-age/romance novel influenced about equally by Ender's Game and Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books, maybe with hints of Star Trek and Anne McCaffrey's Pern books in there too.

The art of Todd Lockwood. I fell in love with the cover of Plot & Poison, and stories began spinning yarns in my head faster then I could key them into the computer. On a whim, I emailed him & asked if I could include him in my dedication page. That was a year ago. We've become great friends, he's critiqued some of my work, and inspired more.
His book, Transitions, is a great collection of his work..his website has characters that make you cringe, and others that make you drool.
Another master is Keith Parkinson (tragically, he passed away --October?--from cancer). If you get a chance, look at the detail these two artists put into things like chain mail, hair, background, and how their characters are so life-like as if they posed for the creation--not cartoonish and garish like some artists.
Anyhooo...that's mi' inspiration for the fantasy romance I write.

As far as writing-writing...I was 14 and thought I could rewrite Gone With The Wind--then I woke up. My first historical romance, Moonstruck Madness and another called Raven made me wanna be a pirate when I grew up...ahhhh, they just don't make historicals like that anymore. Plus...I love romance with the paranormal/fantasy twist done in this era versus the bodice ripping of days gone by....of course...NOW it's called Erotica.

Neeli said:

Was it a book? Something someone said? Have you known all your life you would do this? Is it your destiny?

For me it was--surprise--LOTR, and the words attributed to JRR Tolkien (paraphrased): there aren't enough good stories of the kind I like to read.

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Damn straight. LOTR, definitely. That book made me want to find a doorway to magic. Always has. I used to read it once a year; every September.

Next on the list: the original Dragonlance chronicles, tons of comic book titles, and then, when I was older, pretty much everything Neil Gaiman wrote.

Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain.

Huh.
LotR never seemed to me like something I could do. It was just too... much itself.
I think David Eddings is the person who got me thinking "I could do that."

Course, now I no longer want to do that. I want to be like Gaiman, like Windling, like Kushner, like McKillip, like Wrede... and I think it'd be a lot easier to be like Tolkien :/

At least I am now - perhaps - daunted at a higher level.

I don't actually remember. Probably because I was under ten years old at the time. I don't have those novels anymore, but I was writing a few back then. Well, I thought they were novels. I think they were more like Punky Brewster fanfic, in which she got sucked into a fantasy world... I have distinct memories of there being a poster board sized map of this fantasy world that I threw away in one of my teen "embarassed by the childhood me" phases. I wish I'd skipped those phases. I'm terribly curious about that map.

I think I started writing because what else did you do with a fantasy world? I started creating fantasy worlds because Neverending Story taught me that if I didn't make them up they'd cease to exist. And at the time that made sense. I also started writing because I read constantly, and it's in my nature to try to make my own of something I really enjoy. I do it now because I can't seem to help making up worlds and characters, and then I get attached to them and come to believe their stories are worth telling.

For me, it was first watching Star Wars then reading Tolkien. I wanted to read about strong female characters, and I found them missing from a lot of the stuff I read back then.

Basically, I wanted to write a book I wanted to read.

Karen

I'm from the TV generation. I grew up watching science fiction with my dad. Every Saturday it was "Planet of the Apes" "Dr. Paul Bearer" and "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark"

He even named me after a princess from outer space. He read it in a science fiction book when he was a teenager. So maybe it's destiny.

I don't have the slightest idea. I'm not especially interested in trying to sell a story, but I have this itch that only seems to get scratched when I write something I've been carrying around in my mind for a long time.

This is a tough question. I know I had a habit of playing out stories in my head (overactive childhood imagination, and all that). I'd create whole worlds and populate them, and granted, most of them early on were populated by talking animals and characters from my favorite cartoon shows.

Then, in 6th grade, I was bored from having nothing to do in Study Hall all the time, so I pulled out a piece of looseleaf and began writing a story. Around 7th grade, I discovered Anne McCaffrey and was instantly hooked on her Pern novels, and decided that I wanted to be a writer, and create whole worlds and set novels in them. There were soon so many stories in my head that it didn't make sense not to write them down.

I knew it was the right decision, because up until then, every 'career choice' I made, I lost interest in within a year. but 15 years later, I still want to be a writer

My wife, she encouraged me to write a short story for our first child. Since then I've written many for our 5 children.

Confession:

Tried reading The Hobbit when I was 11. Toooooo much detail for me to wrap my head around. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe pulled me in--no pun intended. The Chronicles of Narnia had me believing animals could talk (The Horse and His Boy), secret worlds existed within our reach....and my Parchisi (sp?) board made a GREAT universe map, taped marbles other worlds to explore. Static-ridden walky-talkies were transformers...kept Scotty quite busy beaming me away from the step-mother.
I was a Klingon (hey, chicks can be Klingons too!)...uh..I liked the bad boys. It's a teenage female thing. Okay, so my bad boys were from other galaxies, Klingons, Hans Solo--and Vampires--I stretched m' horizons.
Star Wars (1st generation) was a world of wonderment.

And now...as an adult...well....hail Peter Jackson. Ohmigod!!! NOW I get The Hobbit/LOTR....wow!

But alas, at 41, I'd look a bit ridiculous pinning game boards up on the wall, or concentrating on the cat to make him speak. So I write about other realms. Much safer. No men with white jackets coming towards me.

Tolkien's writing makes many people bounce. I happen to like it a lot, but I don't see that not getting the hobbit or not liking LotR is anything wrong, that you have to confess

I strongly believe that whether a story is a "classic" or a "just plain story", it's up to the author to pull their audience in, and if that doesn't happen it's seldom, if ever, the reader's fault.

Shweta said:

Tolkien's writing makes many people bounce. I happen to like it a lot, but I don't see that not getting the hobbit or not liking LotR is anything wrong, that you have to confess

I strongly believe that whether a story is a "classic" or a "just plain story", it's up to the author to pull their audience in, and if that doesn't happen it's seldom, if ever, the reader's fault.

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No, no, no--waving hands--my wording must be off. I meant that I was super intriqued, but the lengthy description of scenes was too much for my 11 yr old mind. Sooo, the movie condensed all of it, and was done very well--and suddenly the barrier was removed. Had always been curious about the whole Hobbit thing (animations in my day did it a diservice)...so I'm jumping on ship a bit late. Late bloomer--love/awed by what Tolkein was able to create. Utterly amazed.

At one point, I felt my life was going down the toilet, so I started writing as an escape from that, and as an outlet for stuff. I started writing short stories, then poetry (really, really awful poetry), and then I realised I actually enjoyed the story writing for its own sake, and kept going.

It's a bit like breathing these days. Can't imagine my life without it.

inked09012 said:

No, no, no--waving hands--my wording must be off. I meant that I was super intriqued, but the lengthy description of scenes was too much for my 11 yr old mind. Sooo, the movie condensed all of it, and was done very well--and suddenly the barrier was removed. Had always been curious about the whole Hobbit thing (animations in my day did it a diservice)...so I'm jumping on ship a bit late. Late bloomer--love/awed by what Tolkein was able to create. Utterly amazed.

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Ah, I see.
Some of the scene descriptions are too much for my adult mind. I have yet to manage to read LotR without skimming over several hundred pages of gorgeous scene description just because... eyes... glazing...
I try again every few years. Reading aloud is the only way I can manage it. (One reason I'm sad I don't have kids is that those are in fact awesome read-aloud books.)

The movies are wonderful, I think; also fairly different from the books -- in a number of details, but also in some crucial issues of characterization. In my mind the books are a different sort of wonderful.

But this is thread hijacking and I should stop. Sorry!

It wasn't a great work of literature or anything. What "inspired" me to write was when I saw The Fast and the Furious. I walked out of the theater thinking, "I could write a better script than that!"

Well, I took too much time at it, and the script was meant to skewer a few cliches in the automotive world that are much less realistic nowadays. But I started writing more stuff after that.

I’d say it was my folks who inspired me to write.

Thankfully, I was weaned on great kids books (The Bogwoppit, The Hobbit, Robinson Crusoe etc) but surrounded by large bookshelves full of adult literature from classics like Dickens to sci-fi like Frank Herbert, fantasy by the likes of Michael Moorcock, and horror by Stephen King. I was in a great reading environment, and when I started writing stories at school at 8 years old they weren’t the usual kid’s stories (in fact my teachers were worried that I was writing quite graphic World War 2 adventures where untold Nazis where mowed down often in delightfully gory ways!).

I graduated from writing war stories to horror stories when I was around 11 years old, influenced by films such as The Omen, Poltergeist and Gremlins. On the literature side of things, the short stories of Stephen King were a big help, as were Poe and Lovecraft. Throughout this time, my folks were there again, encouraging me, reading my work, helping my writing where they could, and I learnt more from them than five years of schooling.
It was only later that I learnt both parents wrote stories when they were younger but gave up because either there wasn’t enough encouragement at school, or family life then intervened.
So I guess writing is in the genes, it’s just that I’m the only one in the family who has pursued it.

I wrote my first book when I was 18. It wasn’t inspired by any one thing, but a mixture of stuff: the place where I grew up, an ex-girlfriend, Clive Barker’s writings, and the thick black goo of my imagination that spews the words onto the page.

The Secret War, which is published in the UK next January, was not really inspired by any one thing either, but evolved as ideas do, taking on different characters, subplots, even settings. It actually started out as S.King-ish modern horror story when I began writing it in 1993. Since then it’s turned into an action-fantasy adventure set in 1815, very much eschewing the over-the-top gore for the epic historical spectacle (though it’s still a pretty graphic book by all accounts!).

When I was five, I decided that I wanted to be a librarian.
I hadn't then worked out that books were written by real people.

When I was eleven (and helping out in my local library every spare moment I had) I was given Little Women for Christmas.
Suddenly I wanted to be Jo March, and I started to write, in coloured felt tip, changing colour when the pen ran down or I ran out of inspiration (at least the stories were multi-coloured!)

Later, I discovered Star Trek fandom - and people actually wanted to read what I wrote! (Some ST fan stories are very good indeed. Some ST fan stories are unbelievably bad. Mine were, I think, moderately bad, though there are one or two I have fond memories of).

So those were the influences....