At what age did you start writing and

I started writing at 13. Then it was just random stories, but now I have the ability to string together a plot.

I wrote for fun as early as age seven. Mostly, the stories had to with aliens or pocket knives of golden guns (yes, I was a violent child ). I started writing in earnest however, at age eleven. And I think my writing technique underwent it's most crucial metamorphisis at age thirteen.

I'm a butterfly! *Where did that come from?*

-Kylan

I started when I was eight or nine, which is pretty late compared to some of the other peeps here. -__-; When I was little, I always did introductions to sci-fi stories that were complete rip-offs of Star Fox. I started about ten of these little stories, but never actually got past the first page. I then started to write another sci-fi thingus about four friends who were drafted into world war 3... we'll have mecha in the future, apparently! =D

Then I started my first serious fantasy story on what was pretty much the first day of middle school.

I can't even remember when exactly i started writing, but i have tons and tons of little picture books that i made before i could write, and my first "published" story was done in first grade. It was called "The Little Mouse" and my first grade teacher laminated and bound it for me. I felt so special!

I think i started writing my book sometime after seventh grade. i think...

I'm not sure what age, maybe ten. It was an attempt to emulate Brian Jacques with the story of a young mouse taken as a slave.

The beginning went like this...

The song of spring was over, summer had faded and autumn had come.

Very poetic. I rewrote a few times, but the part about apples stayed. Somehow, Justin was always picking apples.

I've been making up stories for as long as I can remember, but when I first learned to write in school I hated it. There was little or no creativity involved in the assignments. The teacher would always tell us exactly what to write and what format to use and everything. The first writing assignment I enjoyed was one where we basically got to write whatever we wanted. I wrote about the Solar System, as I remember.

The first time I ever wrote when it wasn't assigned for school was in third grade. (I would have been eight or nine, then.) A school friend and I got inspired by a book of re-told fairy tails. We were going to re-write the story of Little Red Riding Hood from the Wolf's perspective. We decided that I would do most of the writing and she would do most of the pictures. I still hated writing for school at the time, so when I came home and told my mom about the project, she was really surprised. We never actually finished our book, but I've enjoyed making up stories and writing them down since then. It wasn't until fifth or sixth grade, when a published poet came to class and asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up, that I decided that I wanted to be a writer.

Oh wow, I do remember!

I was about eight, and my first story was about crime fighting accordion players. Boy, was I creative

Hmm, I'm not sure when I actually started writing. Maybe when I was twelve or thirteen, because I read Harry Potter when I was twelve and a month later I turned 13, and I know that the first thing I wrote was part of a Harry Potter fanfic. But before then, I would play with my toys and act out stories with them. I even started doing it with my then-best friend. She also introduced me to neopets and roleplaying when I was eleven or ten.

After I stopped my HP fanfic, my friend and I started writing a story together. I wrote one scene about a blind girl and my best friend almost cried when she read it. I finally found that scene a few months ago and, even though everything right before and after the good part was so cheesy, I almost cried myself. Now it's one of my goals to write a story with that scene in it, because I think it's that good.

I don't know when I started writing. Maybe around the time I started reading, which was around three or four. I know that I could write before kindergarten, because I would write poems and stuff - really awful ones, mind you - on little notebooks, and they were all about the most random subjects possible.

Oh, and I started about five novels over the course of my life. A lot of them were, not to mince words, bad. And one of them was cliche! Awesome!

Peace, love, chocolate,
Muffin

I wrote my first short story in the sixth grade. I still have it, but it's sooooo dumb. I wrote more in the seventh through ninth grade, but didn't really start writing a LOT until I took creative writing as a sophmore. Ever since then, I've been writing quite a bit.

I would say I really began around 13 or 14... which was just plain bad. Then I began again at about 18 or 19 (to write a novel) which I got to the end of (albeit unrevised) before a serious change in philosophy caused me to chuck the story due to moral and artistic qualms, and so I began again at... oh... 23 or so... to write what I consider (FINALLY) seriously, in terms of how I think about what I'm doing, the effort I'm putting into it, and just understanding a lot more about the thing itself, about art, and all that good stuff.

I never really quit writing since 13 or 14, in all of that time, though I was not always writing "seriously" (with at least the intention of turning out something respectable) during that time. I did a lot of silly things for my own amusement, some of which still amuse me today (though the quality is horrific to me XD ).

Why did I start writing (assuming that's what came after the "and" in the post title)? Well, when I was a lot younger, I started to actually enjoy reading for recreation. Well anyone who has ever been a kid and not dirt poor, knows what it's like to have an allowance, and they know (especially if it's a small one) just how important that cash is at a young age. I started spending mine on books, only to get them home and realize they were complete crap, and that even at 12 or 13 I could see it, and could think of better ways the author could've done it if they'd actually had a brain. In addition to my disgust that the story I thought was going to be so good ALWAYS ended up being such a total letdown, I had also wasted my "precious allowance" on it. Which made me twice as mad. Finally, I got so sick of throwing paperbacks in the can and yelling "WHAT IS THIS CRAP?! I COULD'VE DONE BETTER THAN THIS!!" ... I decided to just give up mainstream fiction altogether, and write something more interesting than what I'd been reading. Which I did, in my opinion, even when I was writing crappy fan fictions at 14. (At least I enjoyed that.)

So in all honesty, the crappiness of every single book I ever bought outside of the classical or non fiction sections, was what finally drove me to start writing, and especially to begin that novel at 18 or 19. To this day, my stomach turns at the very thought of passing down the isles of the bookstore where that crap is being sold. I have lost all interest in mainstream fiction, and haven't gone back to it since, with only a couple rare exceptions.

Yes, that sounds terribly pompous. But it's honest anyway. If I'm going to read (artistic) garbage, I'd rather it be my own, and free.

I learned to write when I was four, but to write seriously during the last year. When I was 12, began with fanfiction.

"Sarah in Pink and Purple Land." Not even kidding, that was the name of my first story. My aunt helped me write it. We had this game where I would give her a bunch of random words and she'd have to write a story with them, and then she'd do the same to me. "Sarah in Pink and Purple Land" was the chaos that ensued. I think I was six. My aunt was about forty.

[I think I've commented on this already, not sure. XD]

In my opinion, it doesn't matter how young you started writing, it matters how much you've improved since you started taking the craft of writing seriously. For me, the seriously-ness came when I was around ten, when I started giving my stories more backbone. I have no idea what my first story was...Pry a story about the Olympics and meeting whatshisface [famous swimmer...XD]. And I look back on it now, and I laugh.

First serious story: School of Shades, when I was 11.

I started writing at about 10...