Writers may weep inside after delivering a heartfelt reading when faced with the question When did you start writing?.  I am here to help. Treat it as an opportunity and you’ll learn to love the question.

Try the pre-emptive:  I started writing while in prison for murdering someone who asked where do I get my inspiration from.  Truth is these honest innocent questions  provide you with the opportunity to delight the audience with a tall inspired tale that would exemplify why you are a writer more than anything else.  So try making them up. The wilder the better.  You can follow it up with a less prosaic more linear answer but enjoy yourself first. There’s nothing more an enjoys than seeing the reader enjoy themselves.   I’ve never had a better reaction than after answering  when did you start writing with  I was in my mothers womb so I sent her a text for a pen. 

I  told a long one about a howling wolf loitering outside the open  window outside the hospital I was born in. it was a full moon and  the wolf lunged into the ward by my bed and took me by the nape of my neck into the forest by the  hills and rested me in the hollow of an oak tree and licked my face until I recited my first poem to it. I could cut this paragraph couldn’t I. I should’ve ended on I was in my mothers womb so I sent her a text for a pen.