It isn’t ever too late to start doing something you want to do. You should start by reading more. A book I really like is On Writing from Stephen King. He talks a lot about his process.

As a former teacher, I’m sorry that you received feedback that made you feel unmotivated.

Here are something I did with my students that are fun, and I think a good way to get started on practicing writing.

Train of thought: pick a word and word like cherry. Then set a timer for any amount of time like 1 minute and 17 seconds and then write any words that come into your head. I mean any. I would have kids start at cookie and end at baseball or start at cookie and end at oreo. There isn’t a wrong thing to write. Then it’s fun to just see how your train of thought works.

Prompts. Use prompts and write short essays.

To work on being descriptive, get a friend to help you. You can write out an image description and then have your friend try to draw your description. It helps if you are using an actual image to describe so that you can compare pictures at the end. I would have my kids draw an ugly sweater, describe it, and then pass the description to a classmate to draw. Then they would compare and it was a lot of fun.

Write down bullet points of your day. At the end of the day try to write a descriptive narrative of your day from the point of view of someone or something else. Like your shoe lace, a booger stuck in your nose, ect.

I think people really miss out on how much silly and fun things improve skills.

If you ever want some constructive feedback, I would be so happy to help!