Wattpad Block Party - Winter Edition III

TaliaArcher Presents: Five Things No One Told You About Writing as a Teenager

Five Things No One Told You About Writing as a Teenager

By Talia Archer

"You write?" My friends ask me in confusion.

"Like... fanfiction?"

"This can't be you. You can't have written a novel."

I do write. It's not fanfiction (although that seems like a cool thing to write) and yes, I am Talia Archer, writer of full-length novels.

And I'm 15.

For those of you who don't know, I turned 15 in January. Which means that I've been subjected to the no way exclamations from people.

To Wattpaders who've known my true age for quite a while, it's not much of a surprise anymore. To people who still don't know, it manages to come to a great shock to them. In real life however, friends from places other than Wattpad can believe my age (they just don't believe I write).

NUMBER ONE: Telling your class/school that you write might not be such a good idea.

Not that I've done this (I had enough senses as a middle-schooler to keep my mouth shut), but I've experienced what happened to other schoolmates who blurt it out to everyone.

The disbelief felt at first will soon turn into jealousy. Some people will think you're suddenly super cool and hang around you, while others will experience people looking down at them.

My schoolmate (let's call her Jenny) wrote small pieces on Microsoft Word and began to bring them to our last year of middle school. The teachers found it extremely well-written (I did too), and most of our school hung around her. She became quite popular for all the good reasons, and maybe because she was known for bragging about it. Her homeroom teacher told her to send some of her work to the local magazine and see if it could get published in there.

Then came high school.

I go to a different high school than Jenny. She's at a public high school while I now attend a private one. But don't get me wrong, I know a lot of people where she's attending. Snapchat keeps us all in touch, as well as our 'streaks' on there (though I lost all of them when I switched to using my TaliaArcher one 24/7).

Jenny had to transfer to a different high school at the end of the second month of ninth grade because of how often she was being teased about writing.

It's stories like these that make my heart clench. I wasn't close with her. We hardly exchanged a word with each other. But Jenny was a nice kid, and I find it unfortunate that things like these happen to people like us.

NUMBER TWO: Friends are great tools for writing.

It's not like I haven't told anyone about my writing. I've told the few in the circle of friends I have (the ones I know are actually my friends due to the immense number of silly pictures we have in each other's galleries). And surprisingly, they've been quite supportive.

My middle school friends are now split up in various high schools across the city. Three of the five had Wattpad accounts, in which two wrote and one read. One of the two that wrote refused to share her Wattpad username with me (and she still hasn't), while the other still comes to me for writing advice and my 'cover ninja skills' to this day.

One of the five goes to my high school, but we've always had a love-hate relationship. We don't speak much anymore. The other four go to the public high school across from mine and always message me over both Google Hangouts (I know, who still uses that?) and Snapchat with ideas of either how to kill characters off or how to end chapters.

Whenever I'm stuck on a character name, they're ready with a bunch of weird, completely useless ones, as well as some I can actually use. Writer's block? No problem. They're always ready with some weird writing exercise for me to do.

My high school friends, while completely new to my life, all live near me. We walk both to and back from high school, as well as share a few classes together. All of them have Wattpad accounts, as well as all of them writing on there. They're extremely supportive and are always ready to read something over if I need it or feed me suggestions after reading my works on Wattpad without hesitation.

My heart goes out to all of them. I couldn't have made it this far without you all.

NUMBER THREE: Doesn't matter how old you are, you'll be treated the same.

I've been on Wattpad for two years now, and only for a year have I been writing. It's been about a year since I started to branch out on social media as well, creating a Twitter and most recently, Instagram. Through both Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat, I've met many amazing writers as well as readers.

My age was under wraps (at first) and a lot of people assumed I was between 20-30 (there's a Facebook post somewhere that supports this). Something about my maturity apparently. Every time I think about it, I still go L-O-L in my head.

Even after I revealed my true age, the level of respect I've been met with is at the same place as it would be for any other writer above my age.

NUMBER FOUR: It's not about age, but about quality.

Maybe it's just a Wattpad thing, but I've encountered a bunch of other teenage writers floating on the hot lists and writing awesome stories deserving of Wattys. Each of these people aren't seen as teenagers or high schoolers, they're seen as writers. A part of the community.

Readers read not by looking at a writer's bio, but by looking at a story description and the words within.

NUMBER FIVE: There are always obstacles.

School is, well, it's a huge obstacle.

Exams and homework eventually work their way up your priority list and soon writing seems like a whisper in a loud crowd.

But if you truly enjoy expressing yourself through words, you'll get through them and still want to write a word or two down.

And that's the end of my top five list of things no one told you about writing as a teenager. Hope you enjoyed my post! :) 

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