Back In The Day.....A discussion of your writing roots

Ok, guys, let's talk history--in some of our cases, prehistoric.

We all love to gab about ourselves and our writing, so let's talk about how we got here in the first place. To begin, let's discuss how we got into writing:

What was the first thing you ever wrote? Have you always enjoyed writing or did you recently come into it? Did you hole yourself up as a child and write till your fingers were numb (for those of us who grew up without pc's--heck, I was happy to have a record player!), or have you just now found the fun & enjoyment of wantonly expressing yourself in words? Have you always been recognized at it?

I'm not just talking fanfics here either--let's get down to the very beginning. Share some of your earliest writings, or your memories thereof (for those of us who don't actually own the original copies anymore)....let's have some laughs as we share our glorious heritages in the wonderful world of scribing!!

 

I'll start:

I was a reclusive kid and I loved to read, write, and draw. The first thing I ever remember writing was titled "Bug & The Rug" and I illustrated it and bound it. lol! I don't have it anymore, but the story was something about a ladybug (named "bug") that had a rug, got mad about something, broke the rug (by stomping too hard on it), and had to take it to the rug doctor. hehehe....*wipes tear from eye*...yeah, those were the days. The rug made it, btw. I think I was 5, maybe 6 when I did that.

My first ever "real" story was when I was 8--and it was just like it is now--inspiration hit me late one night and I sat up writing till it was over. Then I took it to my mom (did I mention I'm from a family of night owls?) and she was shocked. It was titled "Sudden Summer Storm", and I used all kinds of literary genius--lol. That was also my first ever work to be entered into a contest, and that was fun--didn't win, but got the taste in me for more.

Anyway, I've always enjoyed tinkering with words, but I really love to read more than anything. I write best when I'm inspired *down plot bunnies!!*.

 

Great questions! I did write stories as a child, because I grew up seeing my mother write. My grandfather wrote stories for me as a child and I've never forgotten them. A love of writing seems to run in the family.

My daughter writes, and my almost 15 year old son has confessed that he might like to try it too, one day in the far future!

I wrote poetry as a teenager, and when my mom gave me a journal to keep all of my writing in that sort of made me feel "talented!" Even though I knew she was just doing it because she was a good mom!

I wrote stories for my kids when they were young and then abandoned writing for over ten years. I was too busy raising and homeschooling four kids, one of whom has special needs.

I got back into writing a year ago and I think I'm still trying to make up for that ten year drought!

 

Thanks, VL!!

I didn't write "for fun" in college except for my first year--I think it was a combination of the mammoth papers I was required to write that were no fun & time contraints...but I really lost my joy for writing while I was there. Even though I got published there...isn't that sad? Anyway, then I got married, found RL to be way too busy, had a kid, etc etc etc, and just in the past year I've begun to prioritize a hobby for myself. I began reading again (for fun, been reading informative stuff all along), and found fanfiction to be just as enjoyable (and sometimes more so...) as the published works I've read. And this has inspired my muse finally.

*deep breath* whew! I talk too much sometimes! lol

next....?

 

Great thread, SV!

<<I didn't write "for fun" in college except for my first year--I think it was a combination of the mammoth papers I was required to write that were no fun & time contraints...but I really lost my joy for writing while I was there.>>

It's funny, because I only really got into writing once I got into college...the only real writing I'd done before then was for school, and then I found the wonderful world of fanfiction and... I guess the rest is history!

I was a freshman in college and had this scene in my head that I thought might happen in Episode III and it was just screaming at me! When I finally came across the fanfic boards, I decided to just write it and it ended up taking on a life of it's own...by then I was hooked and just kept writing...

I'm hoping to try something outside of fanfiction at some point, though...

 

astoanna--that Oprah quote is the funniest thing I've ever--EVER--read!! did she really say that?

 

Actually, that joke is really, really old - I heard it at least ten years ago.

I remember doing a little writing as a little kid, but nothing major. The first 'creative writing' I really remember was in grade eight when I had to write something for class. I happened to be listening to the soundtrack for Cats at the time, and I ended up with a PB for a first-person story of a cat in the big city. Still have it (printed on my good old dot matrix printer even!) though it's back in my hometown, so I couldn't share it.

Didn't do anything through high school or my undergrad degree, but then somehow stumbled on fan fic during my Masters. After I finished, I worked some temp jobs where they didn't give me much to do, so I made myself look like I was busy by writing stories.

And look at me now...

One interesting thing I've noticed about myself though, is that I've always been a journal writer and I wonder if that's what made me so comfortable writing in first person. My first few stories here were in first person, and it was a real push to start writing in third. Anyone else have this experience?

Shaindl

 

What was the first thing you ever wrote?

Hmmm I was nine or ten and it was about a guy driving home from work. He ended up having to take a detour due to some flooding from the heavy rains they been having. His detour winds up going near some woods.

He accidently hit something large and white with his car. Stopping to see if it was all right, he noticed that the white thing was through the bushes some. Going in to see if it was hurt, it happened to be a Unicorn. Needless to say, he reached out to touch it and w/in a blink of an eye it was gone. So he kind'a wasn't sure if he actually hit the thing and imagined it. But the dent in his vehicle said otherwise.

Oh well it was juz something that popped in my head as a kid.

Have you always enjoyed writing or did you recently come into it?

I've loved reading and writing for a very loooooong time hehehe. As far as I can remember I have done it. I took a course through the mail for writing literature. Took me about a year to finish it but the market is soooo hard to get going or get on I gave up oh well...


Did you hole yourself up as a child and write till your fingers were numb (for those of us who grew up without pc's--heck, I was happy to have a record player!), or have you just now found the fun & enjoyment of wantonly expressing yourself in words?

ALL the time! Didn't have a PC had tons of notepads and spiral notepads. My mom used to think me crazy having so many sprawled about. She used to get mad, cuz I would get upset when they had been moved. I had one at each restful spot that I liked throughout the house. *snrk* yeah... a lil looney I think too. And I still do it now in my house Cuz you never know when an idea will come to you!

Have you always been recognized at it?

Not 100% sure really. I was in advanced Eng for my last 3 years of school (prior to college - which I still need to do complete... *sigh*) and we did A LOT of writing. Hehehehe I was dubbed 'Pessimistic Philosopher' by my teachers due to my cynical outlooks and ideas. Hey I juz was pointing out the truth. I always have seen the bad before the good. *shrugs* Dunno if it's a good title or not

But several of my teachers enjoyed my fiction when I did them. I could come up with a story on the whim and they thought that was extraordinary.

And writing SW fanfic has been interesting, never did it before until last year. and I'm totally enjoying it now!!

 

I don't ever remember writing when I was a kid but recently my husband stumbled over stories that I had written when I was 10 or 11. Really horrible stuff. My kids thought they were vastly amusing. I just cringed.

I didn't start writing stories (never thought I could) until the last couple of years. I've always been creative but physically - crafts and costumes and quilts. I had been reading fan fiction for a while (I'm a voracious reader of many things) but a story just came to me. Ordinarily I would ignore it - I had for years - but I considered it a challenge. It wasn't too bad, either and so when the next (what I now know is a plot bunny) came along, I wrote that down and the rest they say is history.

As for enjoying writing.... I'm weird. I don't enjoy it at all. I'm always glad when the story is done. But it's worse to ignore the plot bunnies so I just write them and make them alive and free to hop away.


I'm so glad that others like writing so much. More things to read

 

Here are my two cents...

I wrote when I was in elementary school and loved it, got good marks, but that's where it ended. After fourth grade I stopped, because I didn't see any point in doing it when nobody except my parents ever read it. I just didn't get enough encouragement.
I started again when I was nineteen, with fanfiction this time and finally someone told me what they thought about it. Up to that point I never had the slightest clue whether I had any talent at all. Well, I'm not so sure now, but at least some people like it. The funny thing is that now nobody in my family reads my fics, because my brother doesn't like SW and my parents only speak a little English. So I don't have any readers whom I know personally.
In between I only wrote a few times in English class, because my teacher there was the only one ever paying attention to creativeness.
I guess writing is for me a kind of substitute for drawing for which I have absolutely no talent, but which I would very much like to do.

My first story? Can't remember it exactly, but I think it was something about a lost cat and I think I was eight years old.

 

I don't think I did a lot of creative writing as a child. I think that when I stumbled across TFN when I was 13, that's when I got into it.

My first story? Oh lord, I think it's still buried on this board somewhere... It was HORRIBLE. For my first year at the JC (99-00), I tried writing comedy. TOTALLY sucked at it. Still do, come to think of it.

As for being recognized, while none of my RL friends know about fan fiction, they all know that I write really well. They would all ask me to help them write papers and do any kind of work that inolved creative writing. Heck, barely two weeks after moving into college in Sept, my suitemate, who I had barely gotten to know, asked me to write her a script for a TV show she wanted to make.

 

The first story I remember writing was when I was five. It was about a deaf horse. The main reason I remember it is that when I asked the kindergarten teacher how to spell deaf, she told me D-E-A-T-H.

I wrote occasional stories throughout the following years, and then I discovered the net -- particularly Usenet -- in college (back in the pre-Web days). But that's another story.

 

I remember writing as a child, don't remember what about though. I do know that I wrote quite a few, most for school however.

The oldest period of writing I truly remember is last year when I wrote a fic on here that didn't go anywhere and thus, was abandoned. Three of them in fact.

My memory is horrible, even worse than some 60 year olds I know. So, I can't talk much.

 

I think the first creative writing I remember doing was in elementary school. I remember our teacher having us do "sticker stories" where we put a sticker on a piece of paper and wrote a story about the picture. It was my favorite activity station.

After that, I remember writing for myself in high school - it wasn't fan fiction and never shared it with anyone. College sort of killed my muse for a long time. I hated writing anything.

I started reading fan fiction about a year ago and lurked for a long time. It was I'll read, but not post. Then read and post, but not write. You know how it goes. Now I'm having to beat the bunnies back.

 

SV- Yep, she did...

Actually I found the quote in my university's day planner...each page has a different quote at the bottom and when I read that one, I thought it would be perfect to change my sig quote to...

 

I don't even remember the first thing I wrote. It was on the computer and got (thankfully) lost when I got my newer one.

I always loved playing with dolls when I was younger. I had them go on adventures to save their dying horse, or something of that sort, and my mom wrote them down what I said, so I guess you could say that was my first creative piece. I also had a lot of other stuff that I would dictate to my mom--fun, gooey stuff, like going to the amusement park and stuff like that. I think I was about five when I did the majority of that.

Interestingly enough, I've got an original fiction that I am seriously pursuing currently that is actually inspired by a game I was playing with my friend's dolls in about sixth grade. It's been twisted and mutilated beyond any recognition, and gone through two or three co-authors, but I can't quite give it up.

The first writing piece that I can actually find is from fourth grade. It was inspired by a week long summer camp program I did about Medieval stuff and castles and stuff like that, and it ended up being written over a six month period, and still not ended. I seriously thought it was going to be published, and I payed my friend fifty cents a chapter to beta it and everything. I'm rereading it right now, and I think the evil thing should be burned from existence. Gah. You can completely tell what I was doing while I wrote--I read Patricia C. Wrede's stuff, and I mentioned "stuck-up unicorns and ugly ogres and kind dragons and daring knights and run away princesses." I watched The Little Mermaid and that's the main character's Halloween costume. It's humiliating.

However, that was when I really did begin to take writing seriously. There was a group of about five girls at my school, and we all took writing very seriously, and we read and beta'ed each other's stuff. It was awesome. I moved in seventh grade, but still keep in contact with all of them.

As far as recognition, I've gotten published in the newspaper once, I'm a bit of a teacher's pet with my favorite Language Arts teacher, and I'm kind of the official writing class poet, but that's it.

 

gah, I've always been a fanfic writer, long before I ever knew what it was. XD;

My first stories (that I remember) were using the characters from some little kids' dinosaur books or something, I wrote a couple when I was six. I don't remember any though. ;

When I was 8/9, I was in the Creative Writing club at school, and wrote a fair few stories there. I still have one, cause the teacher made a book out of everyone's stories once. ^^; It was about a kid and his sister finding a dinosaur bone in a junkyard, and taking it to the crazy scientist across the street, who used it to build a rocket and then launched himself into space by mistake. o___O;;

And when I was nine, I wrote a bunch of fanfics with my best friend, mostly Rugrats stuff. We also had this little project going when Nickelodeon cancelled Kablam!, to make and illustrate our own version of it. ^^; It was fun.

I planned to write JJK stuff when I was nine, too, but never got round to it. . .I wrote this terrible Star Wars fic when I was ten though, about Han, Jaina, Anakin, Threepio and Artoo discovering Earth, and landing at my old school and meeting up with James (my best friend -- the Rugrats writer ) and everyone. It was inspired by James' comment on what Threepio's reaction would be to Imperial Leather soap. XD;

Abandoned writing for a while, started up again with Digimon fanfiction, abandoned again, wrote some original stuff in English class (where Jay, the main character of my original story, was created), and got into it again when I discovered K/J fanfic in March this year.

Yeah, I guess I've always been a writer really. It's just an awesome way to express myself. ^^

 

My first story? Erm?

My mom says I always told really well-built stories as a child (some of which she had no idea where I got the ideas for them), but then they'd die.

I think my first written fic was "Mibra and Dibra"?some silly thing about two zebras. I worked on it intermittently through some years, but I scrapped it at nine. It's been lost somewhere in computer transfers.

I would write stories when necessary for school, but apparently I forgot how much I'd enjoyed it. (It's also possible that I thought, "What good is this doing me?" about my zebra story and threw in the towel.)

When Star Trek: Voyager came out and I saw my first Star Trek episode, I started daydreaming, adding onto it and including myself. Star Wars and other shows and books also got this. Little by little, I worked myself out of them.

Three summers ago, I got an original daydream and started writing it down. This kicked off my writing.

Shortly thereafter, I started writing down my Star Wars daydream, too, figuring it would be good practice. This was about three years ago.

Last May I learned about fanfiction. I don't remember how? But I found fanfiction.net. I did a novella as background to my umpteen-times restarted SW novel that had originally been started as a daydream. My fanfiction writing mushroomed.

If this is too detailed, sorry. I always seem to make things too long or too short.

 

Actually, I'd never written any fiction at all before writing fanfic, and I only started writing that last August.

This seems incredibly strange, and ironic, because I'm a writing/lit major and always have been. I assumed I would teach and publish literary analyses and leave the fiction to the insanely creative.

Yeah, right.

I always found writing characters more fascinating than the situations themselves, and I know that comes out of a love for the stage. Character development is a big deal and always has been for me.

Seeing my incredibly brief history in said area, not much more needs to be written. Just don't be afraid when I start analyzing your stories in terms of mythological undertones or unusual dichotomies.

*KR*

 

Shaindl I have been a journal writer off and on through the years, but even more so a letter writer. When I finally tried a letter form or first person story, I realized I had little trouble with those stories.

The first thing I wrote that I remember was a Halloween poem in grade school, maybe around 4th or 5th grade. I thought it was great and so did my dad, who loves poetry. I remember my teacher thought it was average though. Oh well. I wrote stories if they were assignments through high school and college, but never really ventured beyond that. I have always enjoyed writing letters, though, and have been told on more than one occasion that people love to get my letters.

Like so many others I also stumbled onto fan fiction and read for the longest time, but I found that the stories I wanted most to read were few and far between and so I decided to write them myself.

I guess I will be writing until my muse runs out.

 

Cool. Nice topic Sarka! *Hmmm, thinks back to the days before atari's*

What was the first thing you ever wrote?

I think the first thing I wrote was poetry, well, actually you would call it verse. Poetry is more technical. Verse is a lot more forgiving. This was back in the 3rd or 4th grade. I wrote small verse and even some Haikus.

Have you always enjoyed writing or did you recently come into it?

I have always, always enjoyed writing, but it stems more from drawing and creating/building. My mother was a very good artist and I took after her. I drew a lot. My style these days is photorealistic pencil art using h and b pencils. As for creating, well, I build houses for a living and I love it. Okay, back on topic.

Did you hole yourself up as a child and write till your fingers were numb or have you just now found the fun & enjoyment of wantonly expressing yourself in words? Have you always been recognized at it?

I never holed myself up. I was a very outgoing and active child. But when I did write I wrote fantasy stories and sci fi stories and illustrated my own little story books out of computer data paper that my dad brought home from work. On one side there was all sorts of typed up information. On the other side was nice and white and blank; my playground.

I took creative writing in high school and was part of our literary magazine staff and wrote short stories and some poetry and verse. Aside from that, I never really took the time to take my creative talents to the next level. I would love to be a published author/artist or even a graphic designer. I'm just too busy with work and getting my kids out of the house, lol. Maybe in the next 5 or 10 years.

One of my early stories written as a child was about meeting a man who knew a lot about me and encouraged me. I found out that it was me from the future. It was a bit sci fi. My most cherished work is a poem (no it's not in iambic pentameter) I wrote back in 1991, on December 24th. It's about the life of Jesus Christ and about one day meeting Him. It's very personal but I'm willing to share it if you pm me.

Next!

 

I wrote my own version of The Goonies back when I was about 8 or 9. Lets just say it sucked.

 

Hmmm... I wrote my first story back when I was about... six. It was called Ribbit the Frog and was co-authored by my twin brother and my babysitter. It spawned a number of sequels and I still have some of them... somewhere. Essentially, it was about a bunch of frogs, one named Ribbit, who went on all sorts of weird adventures in a place called the big swamp.

In third grade I got back into writing. I wrote what was for a long time one of my longest pieces (31 pages!). Unfortunately, it was not punctuated in any shape or form besides commas and periods, had only an inkling of a plot, and so many characters I tended to phase them in and out as often as I changed my socks. (quite often back then. Now I don't wear socks, or shoes for that manner, very often.)

I wrote all the way through fourth, fifth, and sixth grades in little journals - some of my stuff was over one hundred pages and I'm in the process of typing and revising it. In seventh grade, I 1) wrote and completed my very first novel length original story (I have yet to revise it and submit it to a publisher, but it was serialized in the school library.) and I 2} discovered fanfiction. I could hardly wait til my thirteenth birthday so I could start writing my own.

Now I'm in 8th grade (wheee! HS entrance exams!) and writing way too much fanfiction. Actually, I think I've been neglecting my orignal stories a bit in favor of my fanfics. Better get back to them!

There! My background! *posts before her computer glitches and deletes the whole thing*

 

I always had a mind for storytelling. The first actual story I wrote was a Star Wars fanfic, although at the time I knew nothing of fan fic's existances and had only been introduced to a couple EU novels. It started out as a 500 word short story for an english class in 7th grade. When I was finished it had made it into its 3rd chapter and over twenty pages. It was fraught with continuity errors and, as I later found out, played storylines. To this day I have never released that story to anyone elses eyes, as is my displeasure with it. One character I created from that tale escaped, and made his way into the pages of a saga I'm working on, was working on. That project went down hill once I realized the near impossibility of an unknown being published into Star Wars novels. But that is nothing more than one small chapter of my life, a small story meant to build into a grander tale. For know I continue to write short stories, whenever a brilliant idea springs to my mind. and vie my time building and fabricating my own saga, far removed from fan fiction, hoping that the work will make its way to publication. I'm always looking for a way to pay the rest of my tuition, especially if its doing something that's in my blood.