All Authors

[quazar]

Who or what influenced you to start writing

[NickolasJames8]

Who or what influenced you to start writing

Reading The Log Way by Dom Luka and Abandoned Boy by Tom Gaige

[Empathy]

Good stories.

 

I love a good story and part of me always wanted to tell the type of story that I enjoy, my way. Only my idea of a writer was someone with several degrees geared towards writing. Years of experience and critics that believe he/she was worth a read. I had been reading stories on the net (mostly porn) since I was 9 or 10. And had toyed with a few fanfictions and even dared to make my first submission to nifty when I was about 16 or something like. It wasn't until I found my way to some of the well written stories out there that my idea about what an author was or had to be changed. I remember I sent a copy of my unfinished story to comicality who's work I loved (still do) and he didn't laugh or call me an idiot or anything, quite the opposite actually. He said that he liked it, and even if that was just politeness that was my first review/feedback on something I'd written and it solidified my desire to write. It really only took a little encouragement from the right person.

 

 

After that the story that had been forming in my head was bursting to get out and I had to start writing.

[Graeme]

I've been an ardent reader since I was very young. When the internet came along, I started reading the stories available and eventually I came across a handful that allowed me to finally accept that I'm gay. From that, I got hooked on some of the quality stories available and a comment by a character in one of them prompted a story idea.

 

Nothing would've happened, if another member of the message board I went to (DeweyWriter) hadn't started posted a story he was writing. I thought about it, tried writing a scene from the story, decided I could get the picture in my mind onto paper, asked for some 'expert' advice from other members of that message board, and then I started posting as well.

[Jack Scribe]

Who or what influenced you to start writing

 

Pretty "heavy duty" question, Quazar. This is an excerpt of something I've previously written:

 

The fall of 2004 was a major turning point in my life, although I wasn

[Krista]

Hey

 

Well I didn't start out writing gay fiction. I actually have three novels on hold. One of them are finished, but I'm not comfortable enough to have someone look at it that's not friends or family. I hadn't really been a gay fiction reader as much either. So, how did I end up in Gay Fiction? It was my friends, I have three gay friends that pointed out to Nifty and they challenged me to start writing gay fiction. They couldn't get into most of what Nifty had to offer so I started, "Something Unexpected," and with their encouragment you get what I've done so far. Now though, they're too busy to read. That's their excuse anyway.

 

So really I started writing by myself. It was after my junior year of high school when I wrote a short story.

 

Krista

[Razor]

I learned to read when I was three years old. When I was young, reading was a huge part of my life since it was a way to escape my real life and kind of put everything on hold long enough to follow along in someone else's life.

 

The reason I'm spending so much time writing gay fiction is because it's what I relate to a lot. Before I started reading gay fiction, I was pretty sure I was alone in a lot of the feelings and circumstances I had. So, when I found out I wasn't, it was kind of natural to want to contribute to it.

 

I love to write, and it's something I like to think I'm fairly decent at. The only specific person who has really influenced me to write (a lot of people have in their own little ways, but I'm talking majorly) would be a good friend of mine who's been in contact with me for a long time now, ever since I first started posting the first story I wrote on Nifty. He's always made sure I know that he thinks I'm a great writer (even though now when I look back it seems as if he was lying through his teeth to me, lol), and he's been extremely supportive. When I first started, I had no idea if I was any good or not, and he gave me the motivation to keep trying and getting better.

 

Okay, I kind of lied. Empathy mentioned Comicality earlier. He freakin' rocks. GFD was, and still is, one of my absolute favorite stories I've ever read online (even though it's not finished... *hint hint*). It really had a serious impact on me, and I guess I kind of wanted to have that same impact on someone else someday, and this was a way to use what talents I have to try.

[colinian]

I took Creative Writing in 8th grade and loved it. So I took an summer writing class between 8th and 9th grades and loved that too. I took Creative Writing for 3 years in HS, and this year they wouldn't let me take it again. Foo!

 

I was reading stories on Nifty in 9th grade (I found the site by accident one day) and when I was in the 10th grade I decided "I can do that!" and wrote and posted my first story, DC. I love to write, but I don't have enough time to write now that I'm a senior. I hope the homework and study and project and report and essay load will ease up so I can get back to writing. Real Soon Now!

 

Colin

[Ieshwar]

Who or what influenced you to start writing

 

 

Well, like many others here, I started with reading. I just love reading (stil now)! When I discovered the love stories in Nifty and elsewhere, I just became a fan. Then, I thought 'Why not a story by me?'. At first I laughed at the idea but slowly I started making plots in my head and before I was even aware, I got a story in my head. That's how I started. But even today, I read more than I write.

 

A person that sort of encouraged to write is Ryan Keith, the writer of Kayden series. Like him, I'm a science student and I had thought that I can't write a story. But when he said that he was an engineering student, I said 'Whoa!'.

 

That's it!

 

Ieshwar

[Dusk]

Empathy wrote:

 

"I had been reading stories on the net (mostly porn) since I was 9 or 10."

 

Now there's a generational gap. Growing up in the pre-Internet era, I didn't get access to porn till I was sixteen. I found it disappointing. Didn't get access to good-quality porn till my late thirties, when I stumbled across it on the Internet.

 

Jack Scribe wrote:

 

"I hereby admit being a hopeless romantic"

 

Me too, though friendship stories do as much for me as romance. That was the problem I had with the porn I found as a teenager; it had no emotional content. And I'm afraid that was my initial reaction to online gay erotic stories I encountered - that they were plotless and pointless. (Not that this stopped me from reading them in certain moods, *cough cough*.) It took me some exploring to find the well-written stories.

 

I did read a few published gay novels in college, but they were contemporary fiction, and my interest was mainly in fantasy and historical fiction. It wasn't until a few years ago that I discovered there were writers working in that field. Their blurbs don't reveal this. (Pauses to glare in the direction of SF/F marketing departments.)

 

So, as far as gay stories are concerned, they pretty much stayed in my head till a few years ago. I'd been writing fiction since I was eight and had gay stories going through my head by my teens, but the possibility of writing the gay stories down never crossed my mind because I didn't think anyone was reading gay fantasy stories, except, just maybe, as subplots within fantasy novels about other topics.

 

If I'd wanted to write PG-rated, contemporary-setting, light-events gay stories, I'd probably have made the leap early on. But the stories in my head not only were fantasy - they tended to deal with dark events. So did my non-gay stories, for that matter. However, while I thought it was socially acceptable to write mainstream fantasy stories about imprisonment and slavery - everyone and their uncle was doing that - I didn't think it was possible to add in gay attraction to such stories without being immediately labelled a pervert. And I half suspected I was one, because the few gay stories I read online with this content were literary dreck and more than a little ethically questionable.

 

Then, when I was doing searches for gay art, I stumbled across a site with gay imprisonment/slavery/prostitution stories. Blinked more than a few times when I realized it was a fan fiction site maintained by women. But it was filled with lots of sexually charged, fantasy-setting, dark-events stories. And I discovered that many of these stories dealt with ethical issues. That's when I realized I wasn't the only person in the world who liked such tales, and that's when I had the courage to write mine down. Even so, my hands shook the first time I posted a story online.