It's always baffling when I found out some of the most talented artists I've ever seen/known started so late into the craft. I always assume that, if they're that good, they must've been doing it for years! 
The same can be said for writing, in fact, which begs the question: At what age did you start writing? If you would rather not say, then how many years have you been writing for? 

I started at 21, which means I started this year. 

I started when I was 18, and I'm nearing 24 now. I've only delved deep into the crafts of writing since 2018, though; most of the earlier stuff were just for fun, and are horribly written as a result.

I had story ideas simmering in my head since my late teens, but I didn't actually put words to the page until I was about 25. (I'm 30 now.)

I wrote down the first words when I was 14. Been at it for more than a few years. I think that I started earlier than most here.

I started writing some very angsty poetry when I was 11-12. I continued writing some prose and poetry through high school and essentially stopped around 19. A decade later, I’m only now seriously picking up writing again. 

I started dabbling as a hobby about two years ago. I got more serious about it in the past year, and I was finally comfortable enough to start posting my work about two months ago. 

I’m in my late twenties. 

I was interested in writing a long time ago, I'd say 13 or so. Had ideas for a book with people infused with demonic blood or some other nonsense. The 'book' if you want to call that travesty a book, has been lost since lightning struck the router of that house and took the computer out, with the copy of my first ever 'book' gone to the abyss. I picked it up again sometime between 15-17 where I posted crappy work on fanfiction. It's sense been deleted and I don't have a remaining copy of the smut my hormone filled brain could come up with. Been working on the Ascension series of books from 20-23 and I finally know where I want to go with the first book in the series and that's what's being posted on here.

TL;DR I've been writing since 13-14 and finally have a solid story that makes sense now that I'm 23.

I wrote my first stories around 8 years old. I started writing more in middle school. I didn't start getting serious about it until I was in my early 20's.

I started writing stories when I was six or so, but only one or two a year so I'm not sure that counts. There was a brief time when I was twelve where I tried to write a novel but didn't get beyond a few pages. The first time I actually finished a novel manuscript I was fifteen. I've been writing for a few years now (I'm in my early twenties), with a few breaks of a few months when I lost interest, but I always came back to it.

Always enjoyed writing, but until about six years ago, it was always school or work related. That's when I finally started writing for myself. Took a few more years to actually share what I'd written, but that's a subject for another post.

As long as I can remember. 🤣 Longer if we count my very, very early attempts to emulate the illustrated reading books from primary school.

In all seriousness, if I count my crappy fanfiction, since I was 12. That was when I started posting stuff online anyway. On & off throughout my teen years for both fanfiction and original stuff. Though, looking back, I wouldn't count anything I wrote pre-uni as decently executed.

Technically? 4. I dictated and my mom transcribed it for me. By 6 I was writing them myself. But ... I really wouldn't count any of those. They were more 'I went outside to play. There was a frog. The frog is green.' than anything. I suppose I also technically wrote Star Trek AU fanfictions as a 9-year-old, but I had no idea what I was doing and they were about 300 words long.

I would consider myself to have first started writing a proper story at 13, when I began a fantasy novel. I had ideas for a huge interconnected world, maps, languages, magic systems, all that. It lasted maybe two years, with about 30k words total, before I realized it was pretty terrible and moved on. I continued on in that vein for some time, writing between 10 and 20k a year, until I discovered nanowrimo in my early 20s. I think 23 is when I'd consider myself to have gotten serious about writing. I had known I loved doing it for a long time by then, but never had the fortitude to keep going once I got past the early burst of inspiration. Nanowrimo changed that, and taught me how to push on even when I got past the honeymoon phase of a story.

And then maybe five years ago I started posting online. Fanfiction at first, then more recently I started posting here. Since joining RR, I've managed to stick with a single project for an entire year, which blows my previous record out of the water by about 8 months.  :) I love being able to get real-time feedback from readers as I go, and the accountability of knowing there are people out there who actually want to read the next chapter helps keep me from giving up. I love it. :D

Now, if only I could figure out some way to make my writing profitable, then life would be practically perfect...

Well, I ran the writing circle Plotters Of Dreams for eleven years, which I closed about two years ago if that's an indicator for you. Was a member in good standing of four or five others beginning about a year or two before that,I was taught writing in about the third grade, (just starting cursive though about then.)

I started at 25. But my creative journey began at my 21 years old, when I quit college. First I tried music, then visual art, then I got into comics, and finally I picked the easiest for me, just writing.

I STARTED WRITING BEFORE I WAS EVEN BORN!!! IT WAS WHEN I WAS IN MY WOMB, WHEN THE DOCTOR HAS TO INSERT A BOOK AND PEN INSIDE MY MAMA!!! I KEPT A JOURNAL OF MY PROGRESS INSIDE!!! THE WHOLE NINE MONTHS!!!

But, no, in actuality, it was around my days in college. 

I've been writing most of my life. My first real narrative story was a comic "Star Wars Episode VII" I made at age eight; I made hundreds of comics in elementary school, and my first online sprite comic was at age eleven. Since then I've written all sorts of stuff every single year almost without stop. My first "feature length screenplay" was in ninth grade, but my first novel-length work wasn't until high school, when I completed my first Nanowrimo; everything besides those had been short stories and dumb comics.

I started with little writing projects when I was 14! But the first time I really sat down and plotted a book and wrote the full thing was at 16. Been working on projects ever since and have definitely leaned a lot. It's definitely fun to see people joining the hobby later on in life though! It means there are more people to share the fun with. 

I mentioned it here, as well as in my profile, but I've been writing for about thirty years. I "discovered" (I guess is a good way to describe it) the joy and thrill and passion of writing when I was eleven. My class was asked to write a short story and my head exploded with possibilities. I've been writing ever since. 
I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I read and read and read. 
From time to time I felt like, "Now is the time to think about publishing", but I never reached a comfort level with it. I was happy enough just writing, but now I've reached a point where I'd like my works to be read.

My first attempt at a story was in 2013 when I was 17 years old. I did lore for a country roleplay I was a part of and the most fleshed out was a short story revolving around a soldier's memoirs of a campaign he served. I was actually debating updating that a slight bit and uploading it here sometime. After I dropped out of that RP I continued to do microstories for my country but nothing to the extent of the memoir one. At some point, I stopped writing for it altogether because of severe writer's block among other things to do. 

Before that, I did what was probably microfictions in elementary school and I remember my teacher asking me once if I had finished my story yet since the period was about to end. I told her something like "not yet, I'm still writing the opening scene." Around the same grades we had these tablet things and we were supposed to do some animated comics on them and mine took forever to finish... don't think I ever did though. All I remember is it had an ungodly amount of frames. 

When I was 10 years old or younger my brother and I did some comics. I think I gave him ideas and he drew them, he was maybe 5-6 years old or so.

I do remember when I was ~13-14 years old I told my English teacher that I couldn't do this writing project at all because I had literally nothing to write about. 


After the country RP stuff, I took a break from writing anything resembling a story because of writer's block and depression I had at the time. Though I did take elements from the country RP lore stuff and used it as a basis for research notes for a new story which was the earliest basis of my novel.

After I turned 24 last year I started writing my ideas into a story but I ended up scrapping most of it and going in a different direction instead. Looking back on it, even on its second draft it resembled more of background lore than a real story so realistically I didn't start writing until about 6 months ago when I had to soft reboot my story since the second draft version was complete trash.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.