How to Start Writing as a Teen Author

Hello world!

So my name is Sophia Whittemore and I’m a teen author who, like you as a writer or curious reader, loves stories. I love the story for the story’s sake. I loved it so much that I decided one day to pick up a pen and start writing whenever I could. If I needed to write an idea down on a napkin, I’d do it. If I didn’t have paper, I’d write on my arm. Words were so ingrained in me that I decided one day that I’d become a writer.

Of course, people are going to judge you as a teen author. Heck, people judge you even if you’re an adult writer. But there are people out there who say teens can’t write. Well, I think they’re wrong, dear teenage author.

Dear teenage or struggling author, don’t give up. People will tell you to wait. People will tell you that writing may very well be a good option for other people but not for you. If you love writing so much that you can’t imagine life without it, then don’t leave it. If you love writing, then write everyday until you become so good that nobody can doubt you. Write until everyone else can see your worth.

Your first story may not be the bestseller you were hoping for. I wrote my first story back in the first grade. It was a ten-page epic about a pencil-v-eraser war where the pencils and erasers finally created a truce and became the first eraser-pencil ever created. But it wasn’t about quality at that point. It was the teacher who looked at it and then told me, “You can do this for a living one day.”

Now, I don’t know if that was patronizing or not, but I believed her. And now here I am, writing novels and short stories and sending my work out to the great wide world.

So here’s to you, dear teenage or struggling author.

Go get ’em.