One of the memes that has been going around the blogosphere over the weekend is the one in which various professional writers give a map of their careers. I’ve seen a lot of this because even blogs I don’t follow turn up in my regular Google alerts for news about the Hugos and Nebulas. What surprises me most is how precise many of their memories are – in particular knowing that they decided to be a writer at the age of 5 or 6. Really? There are things I can remember about my childhood, but it is really hard to date them unless they are associated with something else that I can look up (e.g. the first Doctor Who episode, or the arrival of Marvel UK comics). I know I wrote a play when I was in what Americans would call middle school, but I have no idea exactly how old I was then. I’m only certain about the middle school thing because I cast all of my soft toys as actors. And I know that in high school I once wrote a proper short story for a homework assignment (20+ exercise book pages of it), which annoyed my English teacher so much I never did it again. But again I have no idea which year. Maybe other people have memories that are much more precise than mine.
Alternatively, if I’m being deeply cynical, there’s a certain amount of wannabe discouragement going on here, which might be a good thing in the wake of NaNoWriMo.
For what it’s worth, when I say I decided to be a writer when I was 5, that is shorthand for, “I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember, and age 5 is about the earliest age of which I have significant memories.”
I can be fairly accurate about it, because it was already the Big Thing in my life, and so I do remember the stages. My big sister taught me to read when I was three; I don’t remember that, but I do remember my first day at school, when I was four, being really bored because the class was being introduced to the alphabet and I knew it all already, I could read.
And pretty much my next abiding memory is the sudden understanding that these things called books were written by people, and it was a job, and you were allowed to do it. And that was my second year of school, the only thing I preserve from it. So: five.