What do you want to be when you grow up? Here’s a fun post by Kristen King over at Biz Chicks Rule. Leave a comment and possibly win some cash!
My question to you is a bit different. When did you realize you wanted to become a writer? What did you want to do before that? And is your current gig the one you’ve always wanted?
Thanks for the link, Lori. Everyone, please do go enter!
I don’t remember the exact Aha! moment that I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I have a bunch of books with sprawling little kid handwriting where I didn’t like the ending and wrote a new one inside the cover. 🙂
According to my mom, before I wanted to write, I wanted to either be an attorney or work at McDonald’s, but I don’t remember that. LOL
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I’ve known I was a writer since I was six years old.
I took a long route via production work, but always wrote.
The other thing I wanted to do (and finally gave up) was be an astronaut.
Ask me the final question AFTER the windows are replaced and I’m actually back to hustling work!
I don’t know if it would surprise you to know but I wanted to be a teacher. An English teacher actually. I had so many great ones that inspired me that I wanted to do what they do… My other option was a social worker but I realized I hadn’t the stomach for some of the things they saw and endured with children.
I remember it sometime around my junior/senior year of high school. I was looking for electives. I was the one who wrote the other girls’ notes to their boyfriends when they were breaking up with them (a backwards Cyrano). I helped with English homework. Maybe it was because I lived in a house with two pens and a huge shortage of paper, but I found myself signing up for advanced composition courses and creative writing courses. That’s when I knew for sure.
My daughter’s path to writing was much clearer to me – she wrote a book when she was somewhere between 2 and 3. She called it “The Lobster was Looking” and she had a tons of letters and pictures that made no sense to anyone else, but didn’t she “read” that story verbatim every time?! LOL
I think it was in kindergarten I announced that I wanted to make story books (and be a teacher because that’s what all the little girls said). By second grade, I said I was going to be a journalist. When I was little, I figured I’d be on the staff of some newspaper or magazine or publishing company, but eventually I wanted to freelance. It took me a round about way and a long time to reach this point, but I’m just where I always wanted to be.
Oh Sue, I remember wanting nothing more than to work on a newspaper, too. There was something about all those movies and shows where the newsroom was abuzz with activity and people were actually PAID to write! When I went to work as a stringer at the local paper, I was as nervous as a new bride. Then I realized the people at the paper were dying to be anywhere but there… ;))
I always wanted to be a writer. One of my earliest memories is reading The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe and wishing that I could write like that, I think I was seven at the time.
I worked in the transportation industry for many years but the yearning to write never left me. I think it’s in the blood – almost like a disease.
Once your hooked, it’s something that you just have to do.
I can’t remember not wanting to be a writer – a lot of my school memories are of churning out stories and poems.
These days I’m a technical writer, which I fell it pretty much by accident. It’s the perfect job for me though – I get to use technology and language and be as picky as I please. Creative writing is a hobby, but it’s one I’ve been making an increasing amount of time for of late…