The Beginning of Writing Careers

“It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.” - Lucille Ball

I was slow to throw myself into the writing arena. Though I recognized that writing made me happy from a very early age, I didn’t complete my first manuscript until I had finally run out of excuses and reasons not to sit down and write on a daily basis. I decided to satisfy my curiosity and find out when or how other authors embarked on their writing careers.

According to the web site of Nora Roberts, her career was born during a blizzard in 1979. “She was snowed in with a three and six year old with no kindergarten respite in sight and a dwindling supply of chocolate. Born into a family of readers, Nora had never known a time that she wasn't reading or making up stories. During the now famous blizzard, she pulled out a pencil and notebook and began to write down one of those stories. It was there that a career was born.”

In, On Writing, Stephen King tells of the time when he was six and copied a story from a comic book. He showed it to his mother who then encouraged him to write a story of his own. He did. In fact, he wrote four stories and his mother paid him a quarter each. Obviously, he was paid for his writing at a much earlier age than most of us.

According to Chevron Cars.com, as a young man, Theodor Seuss Geisel worked for an oil company writing ads that consisted of cartoon drawings of people. This began his love for writing and drawing. In 1937, while on a trip, he was inspired to write his first book, To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. He used the name Dr. Seuss, because he wanted to use his real name for more serious books. Seuss was his middle name, and he put Dr. in front of it because his father always wanted him to be a doctor.

From factmonster.com, J. K. Rowling wrote her first story, Rabbit, about a rabbit with measles, at age five or six. Later, she tried her hand at writing novels, for adults. But she never finished writing any novel before she wrote the Harry Potter books. The idea for Harry occurred to her while she was stuck on a delayed train between Manchester and London.

Roald Dahl, according roalddahlfans.com became popular among Washington's rich and famous for the wild yarns he would spin about his RAF adventures. He wrote a story called Gremlin Lore about the mythical creatures that supposedly sabotaged RAF planes. Since he was a serving officer, Dahl was required to submit everything he wrote for approval by British Information Services. The officer who read it, Sidney Bernstein, decided to pass it along to his good friend Walt Disney, who was looking for War–related features for his fledgling film company. Disney decided to turn Dahl's story into an animated feature called "The Gremlins."

Readers, do you know how your favorite author started out? Authors, when and why did you decide to pursue a writing career?

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Tags: Lucille Ball, Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Dr. Seuss, Rowling, Dahl,

Prolific Writers

“Some men have only one book in them; others, a library.” –Sydney Smith

When I read on blogbooktours that Nora Roberts has written 150 books, I was stunned. How can one author be so prolific? According to her web site, her first book was published in 1981. That means she’s written an average of five-point-something (math is not my strong point) books a year for 28 years with no time off for good behavior. Whew!

I wondered what other authors are prolific writers and Google came through for me again. Trivia-Library.com has a list of the 20 Most Prolific Authors and Writers in Literary History. It looks as if Nora has some catching up to do. She did not even finish in the top 20. According to the list, Mary Faulkner leads the pack at a whopping 904 books. Lauran Paine is second with 850. Prentiss Ingraham, Jozef Ignancy Kraszewski and Enid Mary Blyton tie for third place with 600 books each. L. T. Meade is at the bottom of the list with a mere 258 to her credit.

What makes their feat even more amazing is that these writers predated computers and possibly even the typewriter. Think of the number of hours they had to devote to their craft. I can only imagine the agonizing writer’s cramps these poor souls had to endure.

I ran across an article on Writing Information that mentioned Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) wrote from midnight to dawn almost every day of his life, thus turning out a million words per year. (I’m assuming this refers to his adult life and he didn’t emerge from the womb with a pen in hand.)

Sleep is something I find important to my well-being and temperament so his approach to an amazing word count won’t work for me. I’ll accept the fact I will never be a prolific writer. I’ll happily settle for writing books that number somewhere between one and a library.

Do you consider yourself a prolific writer? How much time to you spend each day writing?

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Tags: Sydney Smith, Nora Roberts, Lauran Paine , Ingraham , Kraszewski , Blyton , de Balzac , Meade ,