H is fair game!
H: How long have you been writing?
I was telling stories before I ever started writing them down. My friends and I played games with dolls, and pretend games, where we spun elaborate tales of high adventure and romance and WTFery (because we were, like, six). I can’t remember much about most of them, now. I doubt they actually made much sense, narratively. But they were fun as hell, so whatever. 🙂
I started attempting to write my first actual fantasy story when I was around 11 or 12. It was vast and epic and, as you might expect from an 11 or 12 year old, cliche and also unfinished. 😀 But after that, I kept noodling around with writing things on and off till college.
In college, I didn’t write much in the way of fiction. Too busy focusing on school work and writing term papers. I was an English major, so there was a LOT of that sort of writing.
Oh! But starting around the age of 14, I started playing roleplaying games. Dungeons & Dragons, every other weekend. That was kind of BETTER than writing, actually, because it was collaborative writing and also spontaneous and I didn’t have to deal with the struggle of finding the right words to put things on paper. I RPed for many years, up till about three years ago in fact. And I think, honestly, that it contributed to my writing drought. Because RPGs were so satisfying, and fantastic and creative and they scratched my storytelling itch. I didn’t feel that drive to write my own stories. So from college till about three years ago, I only wrote very sporadically. There’d be maybe six months when I’d produce stories, and then a few years when I wouldn’t (though I spent a lot of that time doing art).
But on and off, I picked up the basics and worked at things, and all the writing I did as an English major—not to mention the lit crit—helped me to understand how stories are constructed well and something about what sorts of ideas and techniques are available out there, and they definitely gave me practice at making words do what I wanted them to (I had a terrible habit of making my academic writing INTERESTING, which some people felt was cheating, as I was supposed to be persuading them purely on logic, not on whether they wanted to listen to me).
I started my current writing stint…um…*checks AO3* August 2011. So about a year and a half, now (wow, doesn’t feel that long). It was kind of neat, actually. In the first few stories I wrote, they came together pretty well, but I could feel how out of practice I was—and I think it shows (Shiver and Internet Downtime; Still Two Days Until We Say We’re Sorry was the third, and it started coming back to me at that point). After that, I started finding my stride and getting in touch with my style again, and things began to smooth out.
Now, though, I have the sense that my style is shifting. Which I’m having trouble dealing with, because I think it’s a fairly significant shift and I haven’t gone through a change like this since high school. So probably one of the reasons writing is coming hard for me lately is because I’m trying to find my new voice.
But! For new writers, or writers who’ve taken a long break, remember this when you compare yourself to the standouts you read. Just because they might be younger than you doesn’t mean they have less experience. Many of them have been writing since they were little kids. They’ve often had 10, even 20 years more to hone their craft than you have.