At What Age Does A Writer Become A Writer?

Good question. And quite a tricky one too.

For as long as I can remember, the ambition to be a successful writer has always been within me–even if it was subconscious. I realised this when I tried to work out how old I was when I first started writing–which I soon found to be a very tricky task.

I remember writing a ‘book’ when I was nine or ten about a girl called Anya and her evil aunt. I can’t remember the exact details of the story, but I remember writing it. I remember sitting in the conservatory with an A4 notebook and a pen (or was it a pencil?) and just writing it. I recall that when I got to the end of the second page, I was bored. I wanted to stop. I remember going into the living room to watch TV. But I clearly remember (a lot of remembering going on here) my Dad encouraging me to go back to the conservatory and finish my ‘book’. And, for that, I applaud him. Because it is a wonderful feeling to finish the story you’re writing–even if it’s only three or four pages long.

I’m pretty sure that I got the idea to write this story about Anya and her evil aunt because of several English lessons that I’d had recently. In that first lesson, our teacher said we had to plan a story. The following lessons were spent writing it out by hand. The next week, we had two lessons in which we had to type it up.

Unfortunately, I never finished typing mine up as I just kept adding more stuff in and changing it. I remember feeling sad that I was the only one in my class who hadn’t finished typing their story up–little did I know, I was working on the second draft.

That story, I remember quite well. It was about a little girl who was shipwrecked on island full of horses. The main horse was either called Chestnut or Sunset and was based on my own cuddly toy.

Now, it is from these lessons at primary school that I kind of Anya’s name from (for my story about Anya and her evil aunt). You see, my best friend was writing a story about a girl called Anya who lived with animals, and her family were pets, and, well, I was a little envious that I hadn’t thought to call my character ‘Anya’.  So, I decided that the main character in my next book (which we weren’t required to write for school) would be called Anya.

But, even before the age of nine or ten, I was a writer. When I was younger (six, seven maybe?) I started writing several ‘Fairies In The Woods’ stories. Admittedly,  I think at that age I was more interested in drawing the pictures to go with the stories, but still, I did write the stories first. I believe my parents still have these ‘original’ editions, and I know that my Dad photographed/scanned all the pages so we have digital copies too. One, I believe was called ‘The Fairies And The Ice Cream’.

And that age, I don’t think that I really thought of myself as a writer consciously, but the love for the written word was there alright!

As I got older I began to writer stories (around four A4 pages long) about my pets. I remember one in particular about my cat Jet. I’ve still got it somewhere.

Later on, I began to write more and more. In my early teens I started to write a book based on Jean M. Auel’s ‘The Clan Of The Cave Bear’, but, as of yet, I haven’t finished it.

Around the time I started writing this ‘book’, or maybe a little after, I planned out several other books, but I found I could never write more than a couple of thousand words of them before I got bored and moved on to the next idea.

Then in 2006/7 I began to read the Twilight Saga, Vampire Academy, Morganville and House Of Night books and Bang! I couldn’t stop writing. Because I knew that that was what I wanted to do. I’d completely fallen in love with the fantasy genre, and didn’t ever want to escape it or the desire to write.

I shared this ambition with my Mum and Dad, and remember my Dad saying that I needed to get short stories published before I tried to get books accepted. That way, I could give some credentials to any publishers.

At first, I was daunted by the task of writing a short story–after all, all my ideas were so long and complicated and needed their own book–but, nonetheless, I set to work on it. And I was sixteen when I had my first short story, ‘The Silent Siren’ published. A year later, and I’d had twelve short stories accepted for publication.

Not only did writing short stories and getting them published give me some credentials, but I also got confidence and motivation from doing it. Because now I was going to finish writing a book! A real book! I could do it!

And I did. I had several attempts, but I did it. The first draft of ‘Touched by Darkness’ was around 40,000 words–not quite novel length, but still, it was long for me!

And from then on, I just couldn’t stop writing.

From February 2012 to October 2012 I completed six drafts of a new book, ‘Spirit Of Fire’. The final word count was around 135,000 words. In mid-October I submitted it in Harper Voyager’s open call for submissions–and am still waiting to hear back. I loved writing this book so, so much and even started the sequel–getting about 20,000 words in before I decided to do another draft of ‘Spirit Of Fire’. I’ve planned for there to be six books in this series and absolutely can’t wait to write them.

Also in 2012, I took part in NaNoWriMo and completed the 70,000 word first draft of ‘Forbidden Hearts’ in 24 days. I then moved quickly onto writing book two, ‘Forbidden Embrace’, and at the moment it stands at 59,000 words with only a few more chapters left to write–it’ll probably be a little longer than the first Forbidden book.

After I finish writing ‘Forbidden Embrace’ (which will probably be in a few days’ time) I’m not sure whether I’ll write the third, and final, Forbidden book, or the second Spirit Of Fire book, or even start a new novel altogether.

So, what age does a writer become a writer? Well, I believe that someone doesn’t just become a writer–you’re either born a writer, or you’re not. The desire to write is either there, or it isn’t. I don’t think it can be taught, and I don’t think it can be forced. It had to be there. Writing–true writing–has to be part of you.

So, if you’re a writer, you’ll know it. You won’t need someone to tell you whether you’re old enough to be a writer.

Mad

p.s Please excuse the lack of italicisation in this post–I wrote it on my iPod.