Why did you start writing?

I find it difficult to pin down exactly when I started writing. I thought it was around 13 when I was bored one night and my friend asked me to write her a story, so I did. However, I have since been uncovering little stories I would write when I was as young as...7 maybe. Having your parents move house, and having to clean your room out, tends to bring up these little bits of paper you forgot about.

I think a lot of it has to do with my parents. They would always tell me little stories everyday, even from the most mundane things. My Mum also did theatre at college and would write plays and things like that. So I think I just grew up around telling stories.

And one of the reasons I like writing/making films is just to tell stories. I always get so filled up with ideas that I want to express them some how.

I started writing because other worlds and stories keep my life moving. I live other's lived because mine seems to be worthless. Thus I have hoped to do the same to others.

Unlike a lot of people here, I haven't been writing since I can remember. *Thinks*

I think it started when I was about ten years old or so. I won some Welsh story writing contest in school, so I gave writing in English a go. I did that for a few months, then simply stopped for some reason... I started writing again around the time I turned fourteen. Since then, I've simply stuck with it.

It's weird though because since I was little, I've always made up stories in my head. I have no idea why, but it never occurred to me that I could write them down. It might be because I see them like "movie clips"... I don't know. The stories always used to include something like someone getting run over or drowning though, which is slightly worrying at six years old...

Jag once said it this way, and I've loved it ever since:

"It's cheaper than therapy."

Because if I didn't write, I'd die. Nuff said.

I was in second grade and we had this poetry competition so it could get published in this book. We all wrote these really stupid poems and for some strange reason my poem won. This is it:

I think there are a thousand singers
inside a radio
and they sing and sing
and sing and sing
until the song is done!

It's pretty good for an eight year old. I started writing poems and then when I was in third grade I wrote my first story about a girl named Tsunami who sneezes and causes tsunamis. I haven't stopped since.

I've always loved reading since I learned how to, but I didn't really get into heavy writing until I was around thirteen, actually. I was going through that tough "teenage transition" phase and I desperately needed a way to vent my feelings and frusturations. One day, one of my favorite teachers suggested to me that I get a spiral notebook with a bunch of lined paper and just WRITE whatever comes to mind. I went to CVS that day and bought a notebook, and by the end of the week, it was already half full. I was AMAZED at how much writing had helped me to be able to express myself in a safe, healthy, and nourishing way... I now write almost all the time, and I love it almost more than anything in this world! I now have around seventeen spiral notebooks hidden on my bookshelf that I've filled up over the years. They're not exactly "journals", more just sort of random reflections of things I've gone through and experienced, mixed with some poems and songs. I plan to go back and read them all before I leave for college, just to see how much I've grown and changed as a person through my writing.