Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

Hello everyone :)

I know, many of us say that we took up writing because we love it. Its a passion. But i would like to ask how many of you took up writing for another reason?

I would like to start with me first.

I started writing because i loved it. I had good stories ( at least i'll have to back them as good, otherwise they wont qualify at all).

I wrote my first novel as it was a pasion to create something.. to create another life, characters on paper.. to be part of the literary world.

When i took my second novel it was about the increased passion. Now i got to know that i have certain medical conditions, so i decided to write my third book so that i could support the costly medications.

How many of you had to take up writing for reasons other than passion or hobby?

i know its a bit of an odd question to ask.. but it would be good to know what an author actually is behind the scene..

sometimes its just the passion that drives you.. sometimes its the condition that results into a masterpiece.

I just want to tell all the authors out there that some people hide their problems and try to act normal.. they get disheartened after their book fails.. when its passion.. it affects but the effect is normal.. but when its something other.. say livelihood.. a negative outcome may turn things upside down...

So come out and share your experiences..
Looking forward for some great motivational stories :)

I can't say I started to write out of passion or as a hobby per se, it's more a way to get characters in stories (I came up with to amuse myself) finalized so I could move on to other stories to amuse myself when bored.

Now, it's a way to let my very young daughter's future self kind of connect with who I am.

That's really a good thing to take up writing to amuse yourself.. who knows what might result in making a career. :)

I took up writing after retiring from two major careers. However, it was during my career in Banking I wrote my first book, because I wanted to piece together my father's memoirs from various diaries he kept, and scraps of paper.
I felt that as a Great Educator in Trinidad and Tobago his life needed to be recorded.He had no computer in his days so he wrote everything in handwriting which was very difficult to read. I did his Memoirs in 1989 and reviewed them in 2014.
My Author Interview with Awesome Gang tells all about how I started writing.
Brenda Mohammed - Awesome Gang
awesomegang.com/brenda-mohammed


Brenda Mohammed

I never had an expectation that I would be able to earn money doing the work that is my passion, and I have been entirely successful at spending more on postage than I earn in prize money! Writing is definitely not a hobby, nor is it something I "took up." Writing chose me, and I must do it, for whatever unfathomable reason.

Writing a novel was just one of several items included in a bucket list that my late wife insisted that I create upon retiring in 2001. I was 53 years old, so sitting around doing nothing was not an option.

It took me 14 months to complete the manususcript and an additional 2 months working with the editors assigned to help convert it into a commerically viable book.

I have since dedicated my time to completing the final item on that list, enjoying the company of my four adult children and four grandchildren, and a fairly active social life.

Thanks for starting this thread. It's fun to see what everyone has to say. How and what made you all start.

As for me, I decided to write to get my characters and stories out of my head so I could move on to something else.

For as long as I can remember, I always made up stories. Be it while waiting at the doctor's office, or on the commute to work, or in bed before I fell asleep, there would always be some characters nagging me, telling me of their lives.

My earliest memory goes back to a four year old sitting on a rocking chair, looking at figurines my mother had hung on the wall and making stories about them for hours.

I guess the characters just grew tired of not being officially penned down. :P

Pratik wrote: "That's really a good thing to take up writing to amuse yourself.. who knows what might result in making a career. :)"

Watching over Her Grace is a career of sorts -- writing fills the spare time when there is spare time.

Mainly I write because I love it, and because I love to share the poems, characters, stories and worlds I create with others.

You're right though that there's more to it, though I don't usually admit to this; I usually just leave it at the above paragraph when asked why I write.

I spent a lot of my childhood - and some of my adult life so far too - in and out of hospital, and reading or being read to was one of the main ways to pass the time. I suppose it's not all that surprising that I also quickly began to make up my own stories and poems, and - being one of those children who learned to read and write young - to write them down. I don't spend so much time in hospital these days, but writing is still the best therapy I know, my own characters are still a comforting presence, and I'm still more likely to write a story or poem while pasting a smile on my face than to talk about how I feel openly.

I really think my need to create worlds and characters stemmed from my harsh childhood--my way of escaping, plus I was, and still am, a bookaholic; As a child, my head was always stuck inside a book. As I got older I began writing comic books and neighborhood news bulletins.

It wasn't until I began reading Harlequin and Silhouette romance novels that I became serious about writing. Some of the authors there inspired me to write about love as beautifully as they did. Now, I write wholesome romance, suspense, and I can't wait to start on that sci-fi novel with my daughter.

As someone mentioned here, the characters live in your head until you get them out in a story; but as soon as you get one world out, another one takes its place. Now my career as a writer is starting to do well, and I wouldn't dream of doing anything else.

They forced me to do it in grade school. I wrote an epic 20-page knock-off of Speed Racer on that huge paper they used, the kind where you could make out wood chunks, in the second grade. Ronnie Croy Barrel, who you'll read about, looked more like Speed Racer than anybody else.

There certainly were rewards in the process, and satisfaction in completing an assignment, especially when the teacher returned your paper with a smiley face. And as I grew to suspect that I was developing into the best writer in the history of mankind-- which statistics are bearing out-- it occurred to me that my writing skill might some day come in handy. But none of this could move me past being a dabbler until I became gripped with a need, first personal and then altruistic, to tell my so-called life story.

A personal need to make sense of my life and to make peace with myself, if peace could be at all possible. And as it dawned that peace was in fact in the cards, the altruistic impulse began to take over. I have never heard a question asked as plaintively and incessantly by people everywhere as the one that "Monstrous" answers far and away better than anything I've seen.

This is an interesting question... Normally I would just say that writing is driven by the characters determined to get their story down. I always wrote little stories throughout y life.

That would be only a part of the answer though. Like others out there, I have had demons in my childhood and writing these books is a way to deal with those demons in a constructive and healing way.

I have been writing ever since I was four years old. In first grade, I and a classmate who had some talent in art wrote a letter to Dr. Seuss, offering to help him with his next book. I even had a title picked out for it.

He wrote us back! Encouraged us to continue with our dream but said he already had people to help him with his next several books, LOL. Oh how I wish I had that letter now.

Wrote stories at 6 and 7 that my mother got published in children's magazines. Have been writing pretty much non-stop ever since. It is in my blood, in my bones.

I don't feel I 'took up' writing as such. I just realised that despite not being able to live entirely from the proceeds, it was what was calling me the loudest; tugging my sleeve the hardest.

Coupled with moving country, continent, hemisphere, it was as much about a welcome shift in gear in the grand cogwheel of life :)

Ultimately you can write until you die. No one can forcibly retire you; confine you to a corporate scrapheap. You ultimately call the shots and define how, when, and where you work and on what terms.

Is that in itself not worth celebrating ?

Before I started to write, I was doing what most children did who grew up with Legos, Micro Machines, Action Figures... When I wasn't playing with my brother, nephew, and friends, I was creating my own stories. One day, I decided to put these stories on paper. Eventually, I went on to create entirely original stories, which I'm still working on and expanding to this day.

I published my first book very recently (just at the end of last November). I took it up because it is a great escape from reality. Life's hard enough. Reading can be an escape. But writing is even better. You're omnipotent. If you want to have a character that's a 45-foot zebra unicorn whose life force depends on jellybeans, then go right ahead. If you want a character named Cornelius Madagascar Flibbertigibbet, fine. You can even tack on "Jr." if you want, and Cornelius will have nothing to say about it. He'll just go on fighting hobgoblins or building his time warp laser cannon as if nothing unsual is happening.

Of course, the fun ends when your editor or spouse asks you what the heck you're writing about, and what's with the jellybeans anyway?. . . . but until then, the world is yours to command, and it's great fun. Writing gives you that. And really nothing else can.

James wrote: "I published my first book very recently (just at the end of last November). I took it up because it is a great escape from reality. Life's hard enough. Reading can be an escape. But writing is ..."

Love this post!

For the record, if I was to tell my hubby I was writing about some strange creature like that, he'd just repeat the phrase he often uses when I say something he considers strange... "You're nuts!" But I'm fine with that; at least I know where I stand!

Besides, the voices in my head think I'm perfectly sane, and they've known me longer, since we grew up together.

Jeffrey wrote: "I have been writing ever since I was four years old. In first grade, I and a classmate who had some talent in art wrote a letter to Dr. Seuss, offering to help him with his next book. I even had a ..."

That's very cool. Shame you no longer have the letter, but it's still cool to have the memory!

James wrote: "I published my first book very recently (just at the end of last November). I took it up because it is a great escape from reality. Life's hard enough. Reading can be an escape. But writing is ..."

It has to be the truth. I too face this thing.. "what? are you out of your mind?" but there is something.. that cannot be expressed.. the feeling of creating an all together different world, with every detail.. a character with feelings, family, sorrows.. in reality you cant, but in your book.. you are the king.. you can do anything with a character's life.. you can make any man love his wife, children family.. you can do everything you want to in real life by letting your character have it..

I wrote my first book when I was in first grade. I didn't decide to become a writer until fifth grade. For me it's in the blood. My grandfather, Maxwell Sheridan, was a published science fiction author. He worked with Ray Bradbury and published in the pulp magazines that were popular back then. I'm just carrying on the family tradition, you know, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, for example.

Love, love, love all these cool stories!!! This is really one of the coolest threads.

@Jeffrey Eaton - so sorry that the Dr. Seuss letter got lost.

I had worked on concept books for along time, before the Great Recession stopped me temporarily. In 2012 I came out with a life skills books, full of funny stories. Lord knows, I lived through many wild stories. I grew up in a teacher's family, where constantly somebody lectured somebody. If I knew one thing for sure, it was that nobody wants to hear a lecture, see a raised index finger, or watch a powerpoint presentation.

Thus I decided to write my life skills book as a collection of adventurous, funny and exciting stories sorted into groups of life skills (kind of like the Chicken Soup series, but all stories are my own, whereas Chicken Soup stories were collected by editors.)

I guess it is my way to help people instead of becoming a teacher like my dad wanted. LOL

When I very first began to write, at age 11... I really have no idea why I did it. A friend of mine and I thought it would be fun to write a book, so we did. I don't recall what prompted us to do it.

I enjoyed writing stories, but didn't really have a passion for it until after high school. Around age 20 or so, I started becoming interested in actually writing a real novel. I wouldn't say I had a passion, yet, it was just fun. But, somewhere around this time I began to read John Irving novels. I'd always been a reader, but there's just something about his books that really woke me up to the beauty of literature as an art.

Somewhere in my late twenties I started trying to write like John Irving and failed miserably. My novels were good, but so heavy with the melodrama!

In the mid-nineties I was in the middle of a crisis in which I was about to be evicted and about to lose my girlfriend at the same time. It was then that I found the value of writing humor. I started to write humorous novels and found it therapeutic.

Nowadays I write all kinds of stuff, mostly humor or horror, but the occasional serious piece, too. I have always written primarily for myself. I have self-published a few short pieces just to see if anyone is interested in what I write. Like most everything else connected to writing, it's been a fun and interesting experience.

it is an itch that grows and grows and there is no way to fight it and... you write it down :D

Lenita wrote: "I wrote my first book when I was in first grade. I didn't decide to become a writer until fifth grade. For me it's in the blood. My grandfather, Maxwell Sheridan, was a published science fiction au..."

That's really cool!

My Grandad writes too. He's had some of his non-fiction published, but not any of the fiction pieces he writes.

I've been writing for as long as I can remember. One of my favorite childhood photos is one my mother took of me when I was about two years old standing on my toes trying to reach the typewriter. I suspect I was feeling the itch right about then.

Then came fourth grade and our teacher asks the class to write a short story. We had read some Greek myths and we were supposed to write a myth of our own. By then my favorite stories were from Bullfinch's Mythology so I couldn't wait to get started. Nine years old and I wrote an 8 page myth. Everybody else weighed in around 1-2 pages and wondered what the hell was wrong with me. Including the teacher.

From that point forward I think I started to realize this was something I had to do. Been writing stories ever since.

Keith wrote: "One of my favorite childhood photos is one my mother took of me when I was about two years old standing on my toes trying to reach the typewriter."

Cute!

i dont remember getting into writing at such a small age..

So hatts of to you little 1st 2nd graders :P well now i am a 1st grader as compared to you now :)

i stratde writing five years ago, when while sitting under the sun i got and idea.

My imagination took the wildest of turns and in ten minuts i was done with the story as well as climax of my first novel..

From then onwards.. its been a journey of criticism by best buddies.. they bring the best out of you... they slap you hard before the readers do so..

the best thing is that i have a couple of people who bluntly say " you are pathetic.. change it" so that keeps me from drowning everytime :)

but now i have so many you people here to guide me..

its not just about writing.. but i have also got a to be friends with all wonderful people like you :)

I agree with your last sentence. Even if I don't sell thousands of books, I have so much fun here on Goodreads that it's not as important.

Here, here!

I write mostly because the kind of books I want to read haven't been written yet. So I write them :)

Hi, this is a great posting. I am somewhat different from the mainstream as I did not set out to be a literary writer; a song writer yes, but not a literary writer. This aspect of art found me!
I came across a WW2 artifact while entertaining at a Legion in Olds Alberta. A very small coat, adorned with Canadian Military brass buttons and much too small for a soldier to have worn caught my attention. I began to ask questions and was fascinated by the answers I received. When I discovered that the Dutch girl that wore the coat at age 10 and the soldier that gave it to her as a Christmas gift in 1944 were not only still alive but married to each other, I knew I had uncovered an epic untold story! I contacted these wonderful people with a view to writing their story; Now in it's second printing "The Little Coat" is a Canadian national best seller!
And now my final career continues; my first novel, based on my many strange experiences from the many travels I've had, is in the hands of a major publisher, soon to be launched.
I do find it rather exhilarating to put a lifetimes learning on paper and have many more books on many subjects in the works.
I wish the best to all of you that aspire to being the next Michael Creighton or Stephen King! God bless you all and may all your dreams come true!

Nicholas wrote: "I write mostly because the kind of books I want to read haven't been written yet. So I write them :)"

Hear! Hear!