“When they were young” features are wildly popular for celebrities – people are amazed at the visual change showing George Clooney used to look like this or that Ryan Seacrest once looked like this. But what about the change for writers? Did their early work show signs of brilliance, or was their writing ridiculously bad relative to the greatness they would later create? In what ways did their writing style change or stay the same? How did those nascent writing experiences shape their subsequent output?

Those are the questions I’m trying to answer with my entertaining new blog “A Step In The Write Direction.”

Here’s how it works. Top writers and authors from around the country can submit an early example of their early work. It can be something serious from their college years, or something ridiculous from grade school. It can be something they are proud of having written at such a young age, showing what captured their interest years ago. Or it can be something they are now mortified they wrote. Or something they find hysterical that they wrote. Their choice!

It can be anything: a school newspaper article, a short story, a poem, a review, anything. We’ll post it on the blog along with their bio, links to their more current works, and a short accompaniment from them. The accompaniment is the key, since it’s where they’ll explain the context of the featured piece, what they remember about writing it, how their writing approach changed or stayed the same, and any advice they might have for people now around the same age they were then.

Like us on Facebook here or get our RSS feed here. If you would like to be featured on this site, you know someone who would, or you have any questions, feel free to email me at jesserifkin01@gmail.com. Thanks and happy reading!

Jesse Rifkin