Kindle Scout discussion

So I'm always curious about motivation. What the heck led each of us to pursue this crazy, crazy profession? Best answer wins a cookie.

I love cookies, so here goes:

I've been an avid reader my whole life. As a kid, I was amazed by those mystical people who could keep me spellbound by the worlds they created through nothing more than words on a page. It seemed like magic, like nothing I could ever do.

Fast-forward several decades. I had a full-time job, my kids were getting old enough so that parenting was less a hands-on experience than it had been, and I decided to try writing a book. I had never taken a class, had no experience other than what I gained through years of reading, but I sat down and started writing.

That was eight years ago and I've never stopped since.

This is an easy one: I've always wanted to be a writer. I wrote books in grade school (ghost stories!), high school (fantasy--always unfinished--the maps were epic though), and college (philosophic rambling). After college, I went through a brief (ahem, ten-year) attempt at rock stardom. When that failed, I traded in my axe for my laptop and finally got serious about writing.

I can honestly say I only write because I enjoy writing.

I actually, sort of, well, frankly--I loath the post-writing phase: copy editing, marketing, social media, and selling (and I'm generally terrible at it). I just want to get back to writing! :)

I started writing poems in elementary, and then wrote not one but TWO plays in fourth grade that were based on Rambo. Switched to comic books in high school and early college, by grad school I was doing short stories. I wrote The Zamler's Last Stand in 2008 as part of NaNoWriMo. I've written novels ever since.

I think I write because I get pieces of stories in my mind and I have to write them down to finish them. I've found that if I don't write, at least a little, I lose myself in Twitter, or Netflix, or other things that don't help me stave off senility.

Great forum post, Stacey -- love learning about everyone's motivation for starting out!

I grew up in the entertainment industry, as a "child actor," yet always knew I wanted to write. For the past umpteen years or so, most of my efforts have gone toward screenplays. I'm not sure if there's a better education for learning to write than being forced to develop your story in such a concise and unique format.

My debut novel, Housebroken, was actually an idea I had for a low-budget horror / thriller movie. Very self-contained, small cast, etc. Then someone suggested I turn it into a novel. After writing so many screenplays I felt instantly liberated with the free form of prose. Another bonus was that no budget was needed in order to bring the product to a completed state!

I'm sure I'll go back to screenwriting at some point in my career, but for now I'm thrilled to be a novelist and have many more stories that need telling.

Great answers, everyone!

My word addiction began with my first set of Little Golden Books and it only escalated with each passing year. My parents, convinced that I would starve to death if I tried to make a living as a writer, encouraged me to follow a different career path. But I HAD to write, so I did freelance work for our local newspaper. Writing non-fiction articles was fabulous, but I'd been a fan of romance novels since I discovered them as a teenager and I longed to break into the genre. After testing the waters with some short stories, I wrote my first full length novel, "The Billionaire's Bodyguard Bride". My goal is to someday write full time.

Pretty sure it started as an act of rebellion. That's what my parents would tell you anyway.
There's a whole bunch of cute little stories between the first book, me reading at age 4, writing at 5, skipping grades to push through English/ Lit... blah blah blah, but the good stuff comes much, much later, when I was old enough to know better and chose this career anyway.
I realized it was something I could do easily and well, allowed me to buck authority, rewrite history, out the mean girls, kill off old boyfriends, change the world- at least on the page, and change the people around me with every word.
I am a writer because I need to live multiple lives. Just one is way too boring.

There are details- of rejections and acceptances, of lunches with literary stars, of stalkers and hate mail, of "famous" newsletters and mostly my idea that all writers should pay it forward- which led to the founding of a literary magazine and a writing retreat... but those details are better told in a comfy chair with a martini in one hand, or in a smoky bar with a whisky, water back, music playing softly in the background.
Let's work on that.

The wrote: "Great forum post, Stacey -- love learning about everyone's motivation for starting out!

I grew up in the entertainment industry, as a "child actor," yet always knew I wanted to write. For the past..."


Hey there.
I am taking a break from the mystery series and starting to rewrite an award-winning screenplay of mine into a New Adult novel. Very excited to see how this goes in reverse. I truly loved the pace of writing a screenplay. I can dash out 30 pages in a day-- They are just so friggin hard to sell. sigh.

My defining moment of when I decided to try writing a book (I was always writing little bits of this and that)came after a skiing injury. I'd read everything in the house, twice, and my husband, bless his soul, scooped up an armload of books from the grocery store checkout lane. Sadly, some of them were not very good. At that moment, I declared I could write a better book than that.

The joke was on me, however. I found it difficult to write a book that was up to publication standards. I tried on my own for a few years, and the first 3 completed books I wrote were drek. Then I hooked up with some national writing organizations and my education truly began. Ten years later, I had my first contract in hand. That one came in romance. Three months later I had a mystery contract. Nearly ten years later I tried science fiction, and I'm now published in that genre through Kindle Scout as Rigel Carson.

I may not know what I want to be when I grow up, but I'm pretty sure writing is what I'll be doing.

Linda wrote: "The wrote: "Great forum post, Stacey -- love learning about everyone's motivation for starting out!

I grew up in the entertainment industry, as a "child actor," yet always knew I wanted to write. ..."

Agreed, Linda. I had quite a few "close calls" with screenplays but it's a fickle industry. I'm one of those weirdos who actually enjoys reading screenplays. I love the form and find it a fascinating art. Nice thing about publishing novels is that you don't quite need the same commitment in resources and budget!!

I learned to read at such an early age that 1) most people don't believe it, and 2) I don't remember not being able to read. The desire to manipulate words came quickly after that. I still have the first thing I ever wrote, when I could still barely hold a pen: a comic book called The Atom Bomb, with scintillating dialog such as: "I'll kill you!" "I'll kill you, too!"

Except for a brief sojourn in late grade school through junior high, during which I wanted to be an international spy (under the influence of Mission Impossible), I always wanted to be a writer. I chose advertising as a fallback because in a career book I was looking at, the copywriters they interviewed all to a man said, "I'm just working here until my novel is finished."

Now here I am, decades later, still writing novels and waiting to see if that ever-elusive ship comes in.

Joe, I love your description of writing: "The desire to manipulate words..." That's exactly how I look at it, not in a cynical way but a creative way...