2025 Get Started Right Writing Challenge: Day 3
For the third day of this challenge, think back to why you started writing. Was it a writing assignment? A life event? Have you just always done it? How has it changed since you started? Are you still on the fence about this whole writing thing (and why)?
It's all fair game, and I share a little about my own writing origin story below.
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Here's how I got started writing:
While I always liked reading and did some writing growing up, I always thought I'd be doing something more math-related as a kid, because I loved numbers and statistics...like to an unhealthy degree for a young boy. When I wasn't out playing sports, which I also loved, I could be found playing Yahtzee by myself, just because I loved factoring up all the numbers. Weird, weird, weird, I know.
But how did I get into writing? Short (and most honest) story: It was because of a girl I saw in the hallways when I was in high school. Totally captured my attention, and I didn't know how to make an impression myself. So I wrote a poem for her. And she liked it, but...
When we started talking, she asked me about all my other poems, and well, I didn't have any. So, for her, I started writing more. And more. And more. And eventually, I found I loved writing and creating. I even somehow got into publishing while in high school when I started a fanzine called Faulty Mindbomb, which is like a-whole-nother story/stories.
In college at the University of Cincinnati, I kept writing and earned certificates in both Creative Writing - Fiction and Professional and Technical Writing along with my English Lit major (and won a few writing awards to boot). And somehow I ended up with the Writer's Digest team (working on the Writer's Market books), and the rest is history.
But yeah, my whole wonderful writing journey started because I was trying to impress a crush, showing that one poem can truly change a person's life.
