March 10, 2016 
John 
When I was a kid, I had zero interest in being a writer. Rock star/shortstop for the Yankees/King of England–those were some of my early career aspirations, but writer never made the cut. In fact, no one I knew ever said they wanted to be a writer when they grew up. In high school, my friend James told people that he was going to be a poet, but I think that was more to get the girls than a serious vocation…
And yet, some people know from an early age that they want to be writers. Like Joyce Maynard, who describes how she made to-do lists at the age of 6 or 7 of the things she planned to write: “Write a play. Write a poem. Write a story. Write a book.” Talk about ambition! Then, there’s a certain friend from college who once told me that since she was a kid she wanted to be a novelist. And while med school and raising a family took her away from writing for years, she rededicated herself to it and recently scored a book deal.
So, readers, I’m curious–when did you know you wanted to be a writer? Was it from an early age? If so, did you stick to it all the way through or come back to it later in life?
I knew when I was 12 and finished reading Eragon. I turned the last page to discover Christopher Paolini was a kid my age! Since I had just won a couple poetry contests, I thought THIS was something I could do!Thus, my first and second 40k book I wrote as a young teen– they were terrible (but I tried).I almost flunked out of English my senior year. I thought it was a sure sign I shouldn\\’t ever write again.But after doing really well in my college English classes, I found the courage to try again and several years later I wrote my current novel.I recently sent it out for submissions. Maybe I\\’ll have to write another 4 or 5 books before I\\’m an author. But at least I know I\\’m a writer.
I always wanted to be a writer. I have no idea when it happened, the passion increased to such a high degree that I was unable to handle it. Having no support from my family was icing on the cake of discouragements.
I wrote my first “novel” back in grade 8th, I was a teenager then, and I showed it to my parents who laughed and said “cool”, and I showed it to my teacher, who smiled and said, on the printed story, that she was sure I’ll be a great writer some day, it was inspiring. At the time.
Then I started getting serious about the passion, and my parents started pressurizing me to leave it. Living in Pakistan, it’s not surprising: we still have minimum number of writers here, and the readership isn’t getting better.
When I came into university, I completely stopped writing for a few years, for the sake of my parents, who didn’t bother, by the way, they didn’t take this thing seriously at all. But I started to go into depression, I was getting hyper, my mood swings were changing continuously, my grades went down. Then I met a friend who was also passionate about writing, another who wanted to take part in a magazine project for the university, and I decided to end the stupid drama and start again.
I wrote and published my first novel as a self publishing project from Create Space when I graduated from my Bachelors. Then I refused to stop. I now have another book on Create Space.
So basically, writing runs in my blood, I CAN’T stop even if I want to more than anything.
The first time I *knew* I wanted to be a writer was early in sixth grade, when we had to write a short story. Mine came out to be around eleven pages and seemed to strike a chord with the class when it was read out loud. But, by the time I hit eighth grade I was on to other things. I always loved writing, though. I think the second time it was less of a moment and more of a slow realization.
I’m not sure I’ve ever “wanted” to be a writer — certainly not in the way that Niggahein describes, above.
But — I have always known that I COULD write, and the older I get the more convinced I am of it (particularly after reading certain recent bestsellers).
However…without that DRIVE behind you, I don’t think you really can caller yourself a writer, or anything else. I know that I just don’t WANT it as much as other people do.
It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a writer, I just was one. When I was ten years old I wrote two plays, and my elementary school staged both of them. It was a case of I wanted to appear in a play and I didn’t like what was available to me – at age 10 – so I wrote vehicles for myself. In high school I began writing short stories for the basic reason that I had them in my head and the only way to get rid of them was to type them up. My focus was still on acting. By my junior year of high school I had the opportunity to do a weekly comedy bit on a highly-rated local radio show, but I had to write my own material, so I did, every week, for a full year. By the time I was in college, I was being paid to write comedy for other people, and then I knew, whoops, I’m also a writer. It was never an ambition, it just was who I was.