Questions: Did anyone ever discourage you to start/continue writing?

jhghendriks asks: did anyone ever discourage you to start/continue writing?

I started writing as an adolescent. It was something I did, for myself, with little regard for what others might think about it, mostly because there was much I would not have allowed others to see. I did share some stories with friends; a friend and I wrote a kind of shared world story (that was ninth grade). No one ever told me it was something I ought not to do that I recall.

So my first default reply is always to say that, no, no one ever discouraged me from writing.

But, in fact, that's not true. I sold my first novel when I was pregnant with my first child. As a working writer, I have always had books *and* babies. Always. The two are so interwoven for me that I can't even tell where one leaves off and the other ends and begins.

Specifically, I have always had *contracts* and children. I write because I breathe, as someone said, but in addition to that writing is my work, my day job, one I have been fortunate enough to combine with parenting (and as difficult as it has been, there have been considerable advantages to being able to "work at home" with a fairly flexible hour to hour schedule when there are also three children involved). So, my children have never known me as anything except a working writer. And as little money as we had when my husband was in grad school for eight years, we got through because I was working steadily as a writer during that time and my income combined with his TA pittance was just enough to feed the five of us.

But throughout this period, and most strongly when the children were younger, one particular relative was, I must say, discouraging. She did not quite ever come out and state baldly that I ought to be a 'full time' mother, but managed with sighs about "how busy" I was, and wishes that I could "take some time off between contracts and rest," and comments about child raising and some of the usual old 50s canards, to make significant discouraging noises, the mild guilt trip, if you will. Which I interpreted to imply that I would be a better parent if I were not so selfish as to want to keep doing that writing stuff, which surely wasn't as important as that parenting stuff. I admit, I may be reading more into it than was there, but you know how we as human beings "read in" to the things other people say to us.

So, yeah, in that context, a bit of discouragement. It irritated me, but I ignored it. I'm really stubborn, and I'm selfish about my writing. My children have, so far, turned out well enough. Or at least, I like them just fine, we have a lot in common, and we enjoy each other (especially now that they're out of the house!). I wrote and have written and keep writing to the best of my ability.

This is a really big question, though, that deals also with issues of value placed on the habit of writing or the need to write, ideas about what is appropriate or "necessary" and what is a "waste of time."

What about you lot?

Did anyone ever discourage you to start/continue writing?