Okay, so on the topic of beginning writers, I thought I'd devote a post to how I got started. I'm planning on devoting some time to statistics (number of stories, number of submissions, number of journals submitted to, etc.) later, but for now this is purely anecdotal.
In November of last year (2012), I was listening to NPR on my way to work on the 4th or 5th of the month, and I heard a story about NaNoWriMo. Totally on a whim, I decided to do it, even though I had already missed a few days, and I had never written fiction before (aside from a school project in like 4th grade). Fortunately, I had some down time, and I figured -- why not? So I seriously just opened up a Word document on my laptop and started writing the first thing that came to my mind, and then I kept going, writing almost every day, and I had made it to almost exactly 50,000 (a couple of words over) when I finally wrote THE END on the last day of the month. I was proud of myself for having "won," and I was surprised at how much I had enjoyed it.
When I first decided to do NaNoWriMo, I had figured I'd get bored with it and stop writing after I finished the contest, but it never happened, so I just kept writing. I even started thinking about ideas for stories on my drives to/from work, and I would write them down on my breaks. I actually had a short story submitted to a magazine before I even finished NaNoWriMo.
My writing has ebbed and flowed in the six months since I submitted that first story, but my interest hasn't waned a bit. So now the trick is getting published. More on that later, but as obvious as it sounds, for me the trick to getting started as a writer was just a matter of starting to write.
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