When I was 5 my parents started putting me in piano lessons. Never really liked them but stuck with until I was 15, though the first song I ever wrote I would say I was able 7-8 years old, and it was a little ditty about me and my best friend called "Two of a kind" ... though it was never truly finished. A curse of sorts that haunts most of my writing to this day -- the inability to finish a tune to my satisfaction.
When I was 15, I got a guitar, ditched piano lessons and had a few lessons and started playing self-taught for the most part. My first foray was into 12 bar blues, and making up blues songs on the fly about anything in the room -- it was a bit of a party gag.
At the same time I was heavily into poetry and theatre -- and the guitar was always fun to bring to the after parties
I continued poetry writing, became an assistant editor at a local poetry magazine, started free lancing entertainment, interview and satire pieces. Dropped out of school, starting doing layout/design and writing professionally -- and became an ad writer (it paid the bills, and I had one campaign I devised go national shortly after I left that gig).
All the same time, I was playing guitar. I joined up in an acoustic duo called "The Smokey Robinson Sex Quintet", but we never ever played a gig. I started writing silly songs with titles like "Playing with ourselves", and "Meatballs and Gravy". But serious songs really eluded me at this point.
I managed to finish one, that was months in the works, the night a good friend died. It was called "broken". I also wrote a tribute poem about the fellow, that got published in a newspaper (600,000 circulation), and was recently cited in someone's folklore thesis (that's how you know you are getting old )
I moved to playing/singing traditional folkie stuff, and eventually while nearly having a very nationally successful writing career (must say, I did sabotage myself when nearing the peak), I pretty much dropped it all and went back to school and finished off a degree in computers.
Now, a few years later, house, marriage, 2 kids, corporate job, I'm back at it, though much more seriously now. Before I was young, stupid and had no grasp on how much potential I really had. Now, I'm not looking for the limelight, I'm not willing to sacrifice time with my family -- I want to write, play, sing and perhaps get the occasional gig at a local pub.