My first serious attempts at writing were made in 1868, and I took up two very different lines of composition; I wrote some short stories of a very flimsy type, and also a work of a much more ambitious character, 'The Lives of the Black Letter Saints.'
I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.
The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.
I started writing seriously when I was a teenager, around 14 years old.
Writing, for me, really started in the '70s as a young child. I used to read a lot of nursery rhymes, and I learned a lot of those rhymes word for word.
I started writing when I was 5 years old. I would dictate stories to my mother, and she would copy them in a scrapbook. If she changed anything to make it, in her opinion, better, I would throw a tantrum.
When I was 19, I wrote a novel, which was not very good, but I finished it.
The first fiction I ever wrote was short stories. I was writing short stories in my late teens and early twenties, and I think it's how you teach yourself to write.
The first story I can remember writing, that I truly set down on paper, was a Christmas story that I wrote when I was ten years old.
When I wrote my stories in elementary school, I signed them all 'Karen E. Bender' with the squiggly 'E.' I wanted, from an early age, to be a writer, and that name - that E - was a way of pretending I knew how to do it.
I wrote before I could write. I got my hands on a journal, maybe a hand-me-down; I had three older siblings. My first entries are in the handwriting of the sister closets in age (5 years my senior). She must have gotten tired of my dictations because she gave up and then my blocky scrawl shows up. I wrote plays as a kid mostly.
I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.
I wrote my earliest piece for The Sunday Times about being a young wife.
I had always loved to write and my mom was my editor for my school papers.
Well, my father Kingsley Amis was a writer and it seemed natural to start writing in my late teens. I think it was good that I began when I was young and bold and foolish, otherwise I'd have become too self-conscious and aware of the weight of not having written anything yet.
To Grandma, for being my first editor and giving me the best writing advice I’ve ever received: “Christopher, I think you should wait until you’re done with elementary school before worrying about being a failed writer.
I started writing when I was 4.
I was born in the theatre. My father was a small time impresario on the West Coast and I was acting from the age of 7, but I started to write when I was 12 and by the time I was 14 I was making more money than I was acting.
My early prose style - this is so embarrassing - was sort of a suburban, Presbyterian knockoff of Woody Allen.
I starting writing when I was about 13 or 14 years old.
I've been a writer since I was a kid. I've been a writer since I was, you know, dictating stories into a tape deck and trying to get my mom to type them up - when I was really, really little.
I was writing very early, like I was involved in our high school literary magazine, which was called 'Pariah.' The football team was the Bears, and the literary magazine was 'Pariah.' It was great. It was definitely a real sub-culture. But I wrote stories for them.
I'm glad that I didn't have the Internet when I started writing. I started writing when I was 20 and didn't show a word of it to anyone until I was 28. I had the sense to keep it to myself. Now the temptation with blogs and such, they're just getting it out there; maybe it would have been best to keep it to themselves.
My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig.
I'd never been published when I was young.
