The Insecure Writer's Support Group asks what started me on my writing journey?

Because last week had the New Year falling on a Wednesday, the Insecure Writer's Support Group is posting today.

The purpose of the Insecure Writer's Support Group is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. It was originally started by author Alex Cavanaugh. If this sounds like something you'd like to participate in, then go HERE and sign up.

I (long ago) started going with the optional question of the month, rather than write a post on some aspect of my writing or my writing progress. So here's the January 8th question of the month:

What started you on your writing journey? Was it a particular book, movie, story, or series? Was it a teacher/ coach/ spouse/ friend/ parent? Did you just "know" suddenly you wanted to write?

I wrote my first "novel" length story in my Junior year at the local high school. My creative writing teacher wanted us to explore our writing, and I was playing a Dungeons and Dragons game with friends after school and believed that it would be fun to have all of our characters star in a story. I was proud of the book, and I did it all on a typewriter, which was the only kind of technology I really had access to in the mid-eighties as computers were not common things to see at that point in time. As a matter of fact, I didn't own my first computer until I was a Junior in college. The dot matrix printer and Word Perfect felt like such luxuries back then. I don't think I ever envisioned an age where I could be typing like I am now into a screen without ever owning any software.

Anyway, I learned then what I know now about myself and my own writings (it hasn't changed over the years). I have a vice when it comes to writing, and that is (simply) that the act of writing is awfully self-centered for me. It's almost a mental and very masturbatory kind of exercise, with my own ego kind of guiding the words to fall on a page toward some self-congratulatory end. I wish that it wasn't this way. I feel like truly great writers can write about anything and can effectively remove themselves from a story to talk about social issues or to highlight changes that society needs to make (by telling a kind of fiction that feels all too real). I'm so happy that there are people who do this on a continual basis. Through their writing, the world becomes a better place.

But in any event, I found a lot of comfort in writing. So yeah...I knew I wanted to write.