When I was seven-years-old, I wrote my first story. It was a picture book, and I’d written and illustrated it on large pieces of lined paper which were meant for me to use for practicing my printing. It was about two siblings, Valentina and Valentino, who wanted to meet Santa Claus. I believe I titled it “A Beanie Baby Christmas”.
(So, yes, my first ever story was essentially Beanie Babies fanfic. Hey, I was a 90s kid, and those stuffed animals were adorable.)
Since then, I’ve written a number of stories, many of which were left unfinished due to lack of motivation and/or inspiration, and if I’m being honest with myself, most of these stories were pretty terrible. I don’t often look back at my previous writings, but last month, one of the #Wordbound prompts caught my attention.
Now, as someone who’s been writing stories for a good portion of her life, I’ve accumulated a bit of a collection of embarrassing attempts at creative writing, so I thought it might be fun to take a trip down memory lane and share a few samples from my childhood writings. I hope you all enjoy this glimpse into my writing journals over the years, and that my embarrassment is worth your entertainment.
So, without further ado, here are some excerpts from the stories I wrote when I was younger, with the grammatical errors and awkward sentence structure intact, in all their cringe-worthy glory.
1. Mickey Thomas, Detective Wanna-Be (an unfinished novel written when I was in elementary school)
My name is Michelle Thomas, but everyone, including my family, calls me Mickey. I’m nine-years-old in the fourth grade at J.M. Murray Elementary. I live with my mom, Cara; my dad, Jim; my big sister Josephine (she’s fifteen); and my little brother Phillip, who is eight. I’m tall for my age, have hazel coloured eyes, and long, wavy, reddish hair. I know, I know, enough with the boring stuff. Let’s get back on topic.
I remember working on this story. At the time, I’d been reading a lot of books from The Baby-Sitters Club: Mysteries and the Nancy Drew series, and I really wanted to try my hand at writing a mystery myself. That being said, I had no idea how to create a mystery of my own to write about, so I continued to make it up as I wrote. In the story, Mickey, who is yearning to find a mystery to solve, receives a note in the mail telling her to watch out, and she tries to figure out who wrote it. For the record, I never figured out which character had written the note or what their motive behind it could have possibly been. Also, I’d clearly just discovered the semi-colon, although I didn’t understand how to use it.
I held onto the calligraphy pen tightly. All three of my suspects had more stars than they had started with. Suddenly, I spotted Chloe Rose in the hallway at school. I immediately ran up to her.
“Is this yours?” I asked her. She shook her head.
“What is that?” she responded. I ignored the question. I thanked her, and ran up to the next student walking down the hall. Throughout the day, I asked the same question over and over. If they asked me what it was, or said no, I went off to ask someone else. If they said no too quickly, or asked to see it, I made them try it out. None of the people, except for Sean, knew how to use the pen. I added another star next to his name- not because he knew how to use it, but because when he showed me his pen, it had the same colour cartridge as the note did, which was also the same colour as Josephine’s pen. I thanked him, and went back to updating my notebook.
Poor Mickey, bless her, is a terrible detective. When I wrote this story, I intended for her to be just as good as Nancy Drew. However, since I didn’t know how to write a mystery, never mind a mystery with an actual solution to it, all I did was make my three suspects seem as guilty as possible without ever deciding which one I wanted to be the actual culprit, leaving both Mickey and me incredibly confused. I also have no idea why a fourth grader would have a calligraphy pen in his pencil case at school.
2. I Stand Out (an unfinished novel written when I was in junior high)
When I was in junior high, I usually had several stories on the go at once. During most of seventh and eighth grade, I worked on a series of stories that were highly influenced by books like The Baby-Sitters Club, Sweet Valley Twins, Sleepover Friends, Girl Talk, etc. This particular series that I’d worked on focused on a group of best friends in middle school who dealt with things like puberty, cute boys, and babysitting their annoying younger siblings. Not the most original concept in the world, but it was fun to write, and I often shared these stories with my friends at school.
My story I Stand Out, however, was more serious and more personal, and I put a lot more effort into it than I did into the other stories I was writing at the time. I remember spending hours writing and rewriting drafts and printing out chapters to edit in my spare time. As far as I’m aware, I never shared this story with anyone because no matter how hard I worked on it, I was never completely happy with it.
The story focuses on Nadine, a very shy, quiet eighth grader who has made it her mission to spread awareness and help foster better understanding about autism. She works as an editor on her school newspaper, and she occasionally writers her own articles, although she’s too afraid to actually publish them because she doesn’t think anyone will be interested in what she has to say.
“Write what you know”, right? I blatantly based Nadine on myself, to the point that she’s basically a self-insert. I could’ve just called her “Grace” and saved myself the trouble.
Nadine got up from her bed and walked towards the mirror. Next week I start eighth grade, she realized. It was time for a new Nadine. Gone was the shy, timid, girl who was always too scared to answer a question in class, even though she knew most of the answers. As soon as Grade Eight started, she would be prouder and more confident of herself.
At least, I hope I will, thought Nadine.
I realize now that this coming of age story that I worked so hard on was essentially wish-fulfillment for me. Before the start of each school year, I’d give myself a little pep talk and vow to raise my hand in class at least once a month, which, of course, never happened. If I couldn’t overcome my anxiety in real life, at least Nadine would be able to.
Nadine’s family rarely travelled. Whenever they did travel, it was always such a hassle, and the vacation always seemed to be more work than rest. Cade was very picky when it came to foods, so they always had to bring along a lot of waffles and containers of spaghetti for him. He got bored easily, so they had to bring along electronics with them. They had set up a portable DVD player in the van, and charged an extra set of batteries for Cade’s CD player. Getting Cade to go on an airplane was out of the question, so they always had to drive to their location. Then, once arriving at their destination, they had to calm down Cade and get him to relax. By the time their vacation was over, everyone was exhausted and frustrated, which completely defeated the purpose of going on vacation in the first place. Nadine had always envied the fact that her friends could go to such amazing places and actually get to relax.
Cade, Nadine’s autistic brother, is based on my own autistic brothers. In one of the early drafts of I Stand Out, I’d given Nadine two autistic brothers, but I guess I decided that that was crossing the line from being roughly inspired by my own life to being too similar, so I took characteristics from both of my brothers and created Cade. This particular paragraph was written sometime after my family and I had gone camping for a weekend in a yurt. We haven’t gone camping since.
“I’m coming, Cade,” Nadine said as she walked over to her door. After unlocking it, she opened it up to see her youngest brother, his face red with frustration. “What’s up, Cade?”
He was quiet then. He looked down at the floor for a few moments, trying to figure out what he was going to say. Finally, he opened his mouth and said, “Peas.”
She knelt down on the floor, wrapping her left arm around her distraught brother. “Please what?” she asked calmly.
Cade blinked his eyes again. “Cake,” he said eventually. “Cake, peas.”
Nadine finally understood. She knew what her answer would be, but it would break her brother’s heart. “We don’t have any cake right now, buddy. I’m sorry.” She recognized the confused look in her brother’s eyes and rephrased her sentence using simpler times. “Sorry, Cade. No cake.”
Since I’d based Cade on both of my siblings, his personality tended to be a little inconsistent from scene to scene. I’m sure people who know me and my family can figure out which of my brothers this particular section of the story is based on.
3. Of Innocent Lies and Innocuous Fish (a short story written when I was in high school)
When I was in high school, I developed an interest in writing short stories, which, to this day, I still find much more enjoyable than writing long fiction. I continued to try to write novels, but those were often abandoned early on in the process in favour of experimenting with different styles of short story writing. Many free periods in school were spent experimenting with genres, tenses, and points of view. Some pieces were serious and reflective, and others were more humourous. Some of them were also a little bizarre.
The man peered over his glasses, shooting a suspicious glance at the teenage girl sitting in front of him. He raised an eyebrow. “You say your brother tried to feed your homework to your… pet fish?”
The girl nodded solemnly. “Yes, he did. Isn’t it awful?” She shook her head. “Little kids these days, huh? They simply don’t understand the importance of homework. They don’t even understand the importance of school in general! They just don’t realize how our education leads to the eventual acquisition of our dream career in the distant future. And the application of the knowledge that we gain in school can be used to advance in our career, which could, depending on our future career path, of course,” she lowered her voice, “even save lives. After all, we are the future of tomorrow.”
The raised eyebrow was launched even further up the man’s forehead. “And your point is what, exactly?”
“The point is that I truly understand the significance of the assignation of homework, and I feel terrible that I was unable to complete the assignment last night because -”
“Your brother put the paper in the aquarium when feeding your fish, yes, we’ve already established that.” He rubbed a hand over his face as his patience began to wear thin.
The girl nodded. “Yes, that’s what happened. So you see, just because I was not able to complete the assignment that we got in class does not mean that I do not care about doing my work. And based on my obvious passion for expanding my knowledge and consequentially establishing my place in society,” the girl took a deep breath, “I feel that I do not deserve the detention that my teacher gave me.”
I wrote this short story on my laptop while in study hall after school. These first few hundred words of the story came to me in a rush, and from there, the rest of the story came pretty easily. Yes, I realize that concept for this story is a little strange, and no, I have no idea where the inspiration for this story came from.
She stared him down blankly. “I believe I already told you that my assignment became illegible upon it being thrust down Blossom’s throat while she was swimming in the aquarium. I couldn’t possible hand it in after that.”
This line makes me laugh. It’s redundant and ridiculous, and I don’t know what I was thinking when I was writing this.
Adrienne seemed to take his defeat as an indicator of her cue to leave. She stood up quickly. “Well, thank you for taking the time to talk to me, Mr. DuGrey.”
“Wait!” He raised up a hand quickly. “I don’t believe we have rectified the problem yet.”
“What problem?” she replied, innocence clouding her features. “I don’t recall any problem. What is the matter?”
He began to open his mouth, then he paused in his movements. “I don’t quite remember,” he had to admit.
“Neither do I,” Adrienne said simply. “I’d best be on my way, then. Good day to you, Mr. DuGrey.”
He sighed. “Good day, Adrienne,” he replied finally. He watched as the young woman closed his door, leaving the baffled principal to stare at her retreating figure in complete bewilderment.
It’s okay, Mr. DuGrey. I’m baffled, too.
So, these are just a few excerpts from stories that I’ve written over the years. It was embarrassing to look back at some of these works, and I did cringe about as much as I thought I would. But at the same time, there’s also something endearing about my old stories. Even though they definitely weren’t as great as I’m sure I thought they were at the time I wrote them, they were fun to write, and I can remember clearly how passionate my younger self was about writing. In reading these old stories, I’m reminded of how even at a young age, I was so excited about writing. I can really feel how my younger self wanted to try her hardest, and create to the best of her ability.
After graduating from university and taking several creative writing courses over the years, I stopped writing as much as I used to. I was burned out, and I wasn’t motivated, and I was too scared to even try because I was afraid my writing wouldn’t be good enough. Looking back at my childhood writing has reminded me of how much passionate I used to be about writing, and it gives me hope that maybe in the near future, I’ll be able to write freely and create and have fun with it again, like I used to when I was younger.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading these terrible little story snippets as much as I enjoyed writing them!
Grace Amanda 