It took me a couple of years after I got out of Berkeley before I dared to start writing. That academic mind-set - which was kind of shallow in my case anyway - had begun to fade.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I started writing after college, slowly, secretly writing.
It took me a long time to even dare to envision myself as a writer. I was very uncertain and hesitant and afraid to pursue a creative life.
In retrospect, it seems like everything in my life led to me becoming a writer. I just didn't realise it at the time.
When I was a teenager, I got into SF, quite heavily, and that too has had a major impact on my writing.
I took a lot of writing courses.
I didn't start writing until late high school and then I was just diddling. Mainly I loved to read and my writing was an outgrowth of that.
I went to college, but I learned to write by reading - and writing.
It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing.
I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.
I didn't study writing. I didn't write anything substantial until I got to California.