Archetype Writing Blog

I strongly believe that everyone is an expert on something (or many somethings), and that sharing our knowledge provides us all with a lot more useful information than one person pretending she knows everything. I think Wikipedia has proven that in a lot of ways--it's such amazing collaborative resource.

By pooling our writing experiences, we can learn from each other. Each month, I'd like to propose a topic (and suggestions are certainly welcome!) and some associated questions and invite people to email me with their thoughts or Comment below.

Then I'll consolidate the information and post it on Archetype. The only caveat would be that I'll need enough time to do the writeup, so responses would need to be in to me by, say, the 5th of each month. I'll provide a list of questions to help you think about your answers, but please don't let them constrain you or make you feel you have to answer all of them, or all of them individually.

I'm all about diving headfirst into the shallow end of the pool, so I'm going to suggest we start with something I've been thinking about a lot lately: how and why people get started writing.

Questions to help:

1. How old were you when you first started writing, i.e. when do you think your journey on the path of the writer began?
2. What got you started? For example, were you inspired by a teacher? Did you just decide one day that you were going to be a writer? Did you get involved in a fanfiction community? Did you have to write a story for a class?
   
   I have this theory that when a lot of people start writing, they write what amounts to fanfiction, but I may be way off base, so I'm really curious about that one. (I talked about this in the post below, if you want more information on my thought process.)
   
   I know that the fanfiction vs. original fiction debate can be a hot one, so if that stirs up fireworks, we'll dedicate another month to that topic.) So...have you ever written what amounts to fanfic, even if that wasn't your intention?
   


3. What's kept you writing? Some people want to be writers, but the idea is bigger than the drive to actually write. They peter out almost immediately. What makes you different?
4. What do you think it means to be a writer? That is, what makes a WRITER different from someone who just...writes?