When is it 'too late'? (Advice if you've a mind to do so, please) (Kind of long, too.)
Only a few people (all family members) know the story I'm about to relate. I've never told anyone outside my family because...well, I guess I was embarrassed or it just hurt too much to discuss it. Now, though, many years later I've decided to come clean.
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When I was a kid (about 13 or 14) I used to love to write stories. They were hand-written (no computers back then) and averaged about 120 - 140 pages. The majority of them dealt with gay teens, seeing as how I was one. Of course I couldn't show them to anyone as no one knew my 'secret'.
One day I set out to write a science fiction story about a protoplasmic goo monster in a lab setting. It featured people from my junior high school where I was, let's just say, less than popular. (Truth be told, if I was a teenager today I'd probably be one of those who snapped under the pressure in one way or another.)
When I finished my story I was incredibly proud of it. The first person I took it to was my father. I showed him my masterpiece (remember, I was 14 and flush with victory), eager for him to read it and understand me and, perhaps, my angst. He took the book from my hands and without opening it said, "What are you wasting your time on that shit for? It's never going to amount to anything."
I was completely devastated and humiliated. I took everything I had ever written and tossed it in a box and never wrote anything again.
So here we are, decades later, and I've got the urge to write something. I'm not sure what yet. Paul found one of my old stories in the basement somewhere and read it. He says he really likes it, especially considering how old I was when I did it. He thinks I should flesh it out and try to get it published.
I *want* to do it, but I'm not sure the teenager in me is willing to go through the strain again. Seems that dear old dad's comment screwed me up pretty good and continues to do so.
So what's your thoughts? Leave myself open and give it a try or just better to keep it to myself?
This song from Harry Chapin might give you an insight to my fears...
= new reply since forum marked as read
Remember what Collette said about writing - its like sex: first you do it for pleasure; then for a few friends and then for money 
Pick it up again and see if you still like it!
It is never too late!
Ignore your father's voice in your head, and get going!
If you mean calling me to say "Hi!"
For writing fiction? Never. Accept that your first efforts are going to be crap. The first effort to do damned near anything is going to be. Even Picasso didn't pick up a paintbrush and create Guernica out of the box. Ever seen Titus Andronicus? I'll bet you haven't, and so have very few other people. Even Shakespeare's first effort was perfectly horrible.
Just keep on writing. Get feedback from honest friends, and revise. Read books on writing. Stephen King's and Ann Lamotte's are helpful. Take creative writing workshops, but develop a thick skin first! Those few first criticisms are going to be devastating.
Revise again. Keep on writing. You'll get there eventually, because you already have a gift for words. You'll be good at it.
Edited to add: I've written a few short stories. None of them were ever published, but I think they showed promise. If one of my descendants ever found them in an attic ("What do you know! Great Granny wrote Science Fiction."
I'd like to believe they wouldn't be too embarrassed.
And family members are often wrong about things. Because I was a psych major, my Dad thought I should be a doctor. Yikes! And my mother told me I didn't pass my first driver's test, said nobody did (probably because it took my brother six tries... 
), but I did. 
If you were very young, you wouldn't have the experiences you've had, which is an important thing for writers. It's said you should write what you know, and you know so much more now than you did as a kid. And another thing, writing's something you can do at any age. No mandatory retirement age, no injuries, like if you played baseball, and you can work from home. 
I say give it a try. What do you have to lose? 
leaves you wide open to comments from people like your dad. Who knows why he said what he said? Maybe your dad was thinking you need to be developing more "practical" skills to survive in the world, maybe he was frustrated and angry by where he was in life and how he wasn't able to fulfill his teenage aspirations...
You may have a better insight into why he said that, but there are lots of people who aren't going to "get" what you've done; they'll see it as frivolous or not good enough, or whatever.
It's too bad you had to have that be your first experience with someone rejecting something you poured your heart into. But if it's a passion for you (and it's obviously still calling out to you after all these years), pick it back up and pour your heart into it again. You already had one person respond positively to it, right? I can guarantee you others will, too, just as others will probably be indifferent or critical (in a negative way).
Just keep in mind that many great writers suffered tons of rejection before their break came. Other writers spent their lives in obscurity and weren't "discovered" until after they died, if at all. But they had that passion and wrote anyway because not to write, not to express something deep within themselves, would be to kill off some vital, animating part of who they are.
If you're honest in what you write, it will resonate with someone else who feels the same way. And who knows? That reader could be a teen struggling through a similar situation you had when you were younger and, as a result of reading your story, feels a little less alone in the world, a little more inspired to keep on keeping on.
Bottom line: DO IT!
Hope my ramblings help.
Don't focus on reward, just write. Enjoy your life; it's not about him, it's all about you.
I had written horror stories as a kid and wanted to be a writer but put off the dream for many years. I had this really against-the-grain sci-fi story in my head that I used to think about when I was having some tough times and couldn't get to sleep at night any other way. I figured it could be a novel but I also figured I would never write it.
Then back in 2009 I saw a video of Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed a Dream" and that inspired me to go ahead with my own dream. If she could start a singing career in her late forties, it seemed I should be able to start a writing career in my fifties. I found Nanowrimo and used it to write the first 60,000 words of my novel that November. By April of 2010, the first draft was finished at just under 100,000 words.
Since then I've been polishing the story, mostly on the site Authonomy.com, and after numerous rejections from publishers and agents, I finally decided to self-publish just this past August. I continue to work on the novel and enter contests. The novel was a second round pick of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in 2011 and a quarterfinalist in the same contest this year. I'm currently waiting to see how a flash fiction entry to NPR does and I'm preparing a submission to Harper Voyager, which has open submissions till 10/14.
The whole experience has been time-consuming, ego-bruising and just about the most satisfying period of my whole life. Despite the lack of success, there is nothing I like better than making up stuff, playing with words, and reading it afterwards. I was always supposed to be a writer, and I think Will Parkinson was too. Go for it.
how long we hold on to those early assaults on our talents and interests.
Makes me remember now to say positive things to children. You never know what a small person will take to heart.
But your OP is a story in itself.
The answer is, it's never too late.
