I started writing in my 20s. I just wanted to write, but I didn't have anything to write about, so in the beginning, I wrote entertainments - mainly murder mysteries.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I started as a writer; I started writing when I was little. The acting and directing was an outgrowth of my desire to tell stories.
I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.
I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didn't publish my first book until I was 41.
I wrote my first book at 20, but my whole focus from about the age of 12 was to be a writer.
I've been writing since I was sixteen. At first, I wrote mostly short stories and poetry. The first thing I ever had published was a poem about a football game. It was printed in my local newspaper.
When I was about 14 or 15 I decided to become a writer and never for a moment since have I wanted to do anything else.
I was writing at a really young age, but it took me a long time to be brave enough to become a published writer, or to try to become a published writer. It's a very public way to fail. And I was kind of scared, so I started out as a ghost writer, and I wrote for other series, like Disney 'Aladdin' and 'Sweet Valley' and books like that.
I started out when I was 29 - too young to write novels. I was broke. I was on unemployment insurance. I was supposed to be writing a Ph.D. dissertation, so I had a typewriter and a lot of paper.
My early life had a lot to do with my origins as a writer, but I didn't get into doing any writing at all until I was about 35 years old.
I wrote fiction during my entire childhood, from age 4 to 18, and started writing plays when I went to Yale and Oxford.