Too young to write?

by Mark Rudd
4th January 2012

Here's one that has bothered me for a long time... I am writing (as I always am) a children's fantasy novel that I hope to submit to an agent this year. It's a fairly dark, spooky story in a magical setting, starring an ordinary girl. I only have one problem with it...

I'm only 21.

Is that enough life experience to be writing anything? Can a person's style be sufficiently mature by that age? Will an agent look at the DOB and dismiss the submission? I'd appreciate some thoughts on this!

Replies

I finished my first novel when I was 13 (which was a children fantasy)..I'm 17 now and finished yet another (a romance fiction)..The question bothers me too..

I would like to get published at this tender age because there aren't many teenage authors nor that I've heard of anyway. But I reckon this take times..

Can only hope to make it..

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Chhavi Kapur
24/06/2012

I'm only 19, Mark. I write every day and I think my style of writing, while not perfected quite yet is mature enough to be taken seriously.

If you have something to write about, then do it.

There are after all, many authors who are published in their early twenties . . . you can be one too!

And I, maybe in a few hopeful years :)

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Afsaneh Khetrapal
14/04/2012

Actually, very interestingly, my leading character is a teenage girl, a sample of humanity which I frankly admit I have rather a limited experience of (long story, don't ask, I might write it one day). But it simply never occurred to me before that writing from a girl's POV would be a problem. How odd. Nor did it ever occur to me to make my character anything other than a girl.

Phsyciatrists must love writers!

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Mark Rudd
22/02/2012