When I was 21, I got into a motorcycle accident while traveling in Europe and I had to lie around a lot in the aftermath, which was really the first time in my life that I became really focused and inspired to write.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution - they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.
I started writing seriously when I was a teenager, around 14 years old.
I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something - no, maybe junior - and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.
I decided to become an author when my grandmother taught me to write, when I was six. I can still recall the sensation of being able to turn words into stories. It was a miracle.
Writing was my first occupation, begun at age 23.
I really started considering myself a writer when I was about seven or eight years old. I wrote stories from my dreams and kept them all in a notebook that I still have.
I think I became a writer because I didn't know of anything else to do. Maybe some incident from my childhood influenced me.
I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.
I wrote my first book when I was in my late thirties.
I've been writing since I was 19.