Being a writer is such a weird profession, with a huge chasm between the hopes/expectations/romantic ideals of what being a capital-W Writer involves and the reality of the thing. Which is not at all glamorous. It's mostly hard work and uncertainty and awkwardly fielding questions about how much money you earn at every social event for the rest of your life.
It's hard to tell whether my experiences of being a writer are specific 'young writer' experiences, or things that affect new writers regardless of age. I think anyone who dreams of becoming a writer, at any age, has a concept of what being a writer will be like and finds the reality of it to be something else entirely. I dreamt of being an author from the age of seven. My childhood was consumed by writing. I got a book deal age fifteen, and my debut novel, Girl Saves Boy, was published the next year. It was thrilling and surreal to see my novel on the shelves of a bookshop, but the actual publication day felt totally normal - there was no real transition to feeling like a proper writer.
I wrote a guest post about my experiences as a young writer and what I've learned along the way, for the Writers' Bloc blog. They're celebrating young writers (under the age of 31) with a series of posts in October, so well worth a read! You can read the rest of my piece here.
(Sidenote: The editor of Writers' Bloc is the lovely writer and book blogger Sam van Zweden, who interviewed me on her own blog way back in 2010!)
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A blog about reading and writing YA fiction by 15-year-old author Steph Bowe.
By: Steph Bowe,
on 10/19/2014
Blog: Steph Bowe's Hey! Teenager of the Year (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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A blog about reading and writing YA fiction by 15-year-old author Steph Bowe.
By: Steph Bowe,
on 10/19/2014
Blog: Steph Bowe's Hey! Teenager of the Year (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Add a tag
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