Since I'm probably one of the youngest members on the site, I was curious, what did all of you write about when you were my age and younger? Or did the writting bug not bite until much later? I sometimes wonder if I should be writing bad emo poetry instead of the incredibly indepth stuff I tend to gravitate towards. Opinions on a youngster whose a touch too serious for the comfort of her mother and high school counselor?
Posted by mikemunsil (Member # 2109) on :
I wrote incredibly cryptic poetry based on LOTR that no one understood. LOL, that was 36 years ago, when the fantasy genre was almost unknown, and my obsession with it worried EVERYONE. Tolkien who?
Posted by Minister (Member # 2213) on :
Depending on what your actual age is, I may have still been thinking I was going to be an astrophysicist or nuclear physicist. Problem was those things required skill in this little field called math. I didn't start writing fiction seriously for quite some time after that, although I wrote lots of ridiculously dry and indepth papers on matters historical and theological in grad school.
Just keep in mind that dark doesn't necessarily mean deep, and disturbing isn't necessarily persuasive or powerful. If you can think clearly and incisively, that's great, however old you are. And if you can do that based on sound research and information, even better. Most folk never get there at any age.
Posted by NMgal (Member # 2769) on :
When I was 16, I wrote mostly poetry and short stories. It was mostly dark stuff. I think adolescence is an inheritantly dark time of life, though. I kept the really personal stuff to myself and shared the short stories with my mom. The longest thing I wrote back then was a 30-something page detective story.
I don't think a person is ever too young to be a writer. Don't EVER give it up if it's your passion.
Becky
Posted by Elemeno (Member # 2752) on :
The main thing I spent most of my teen years (which are almost but not quite over) writing was a humorous, sort-of-fantasy novel for children about two siblings and a ghost. I was about half-way into it when I realized that the characters were too much like people I knew and publishing it would almost definitely be insulting to them. This realization was pretty disappointing, but on the upside, any writing experience is good writing experience, right? Other writing I did during high school was mostly for classes, although I did help write the script for my school play one year. I wrote a few angsty poems during that time, but I mostly stuck to comedy. I'm probably angstier (is that a real word?)now than I was then. I did like reading about dark things, though, and deep, meaningful stuff is usually good.
Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :
I think I wrote my first short story when I was 12 or 14. I remember writing another when I was in middle school, but we won't go there.
I immersed myself in art during high school. When I hit my early 20's I began my first novel, a historical romance that I plan to return to someday when I grow up and learn how to write.
Posted by Miriel (Member # 2719) on :
I wrote my first full-length novel when I was fifteen, and spent the next few years revising it. It's somewhat quaint and unoriginal, and my family thought I was crazy (they didn't -- wait -- don't, like the fact that I spend most of my time in a room writing instead of oh...dating or something like that). Even though that novel will never be published, it taught me how to write. I learned about drafting and revision and all sorts of things that gave me the experience I needed to do a good job on the novel I'm just finishing up now. Why write poems if that isn't you? Write a novel if that's what you want to write! Maybe I should have been writing dark poetry in high school...but if I had, I wouldn't have any novel-writing experience, and consequently, wouldn't have the novel I'm finishing up now. Write what you want to. Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :
For your amusement: I'm going to post the first thirteen lines of a short story I started in high school, (I'm guessing I was around sixteen) over in Fragments and Feedback. Despite the pain it causes me, I will not fix the punctuation or other grevious errors. It's under the heading High School Writing sample.
I'm also going to post the first thirteen lines of my rewrite, just to make myself feel better.
Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :
My comments follow Mary's.
Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :
I decided to critique the story instead of posting a rewrite. It was much more fun.
Who else wants to bare their soul by putting up some of their early work?
Posted by JmariC (Member # 2698) on :
When I was in my teens I wrote poetry. At first it was the standard 2nd line rhymes with the 4th. Then I tried different patterns, eventually leading up to a neat poem that you could read 4 different ways and it still worked. During that time I tried to write a story about a vampire who thought he was the only one until he moved to LA. Also there was another story, but I can't remember it. All the work I had done by that point was stolen or destroyed by other people. I didn't write anything again for a few years. It was as if the loss had handicapped my creativity. When I turned 20 I started writing again, this time speech style poetry (I like to call it spoken word style ). I also wrote a few short stories that were character intro's for roleplaying games. People responded very well to what I had written and wanted me to do more. Now, I don't write poetry anymore, and I want writing as a lifestyle. I only have some of the poems with me still, from 1998 on, but a hard drive crash took out a story and the character intro shorts. I still have hopes of recovering the drive some day.
Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :
When I was young, I never needed anyone And writing incredibly bad knockoffs of Lord of the Rings was just for fun Those days are gone (and I think the public should be grateful)
Posted by dpatridge (Member # 2208) on :
I've already bared my soul by posting samples of my earlier work. Do a search for "searth" in the F&F section, it's in one of them.
Posted by NewsBys (Member # 1950) on :
In highschool I co-authored and illustrated an underground parody and satire publication. We secretly self-published 10 editions on the school copier. It was based on teachers, students and officials at the school, and was very disrespectful. We developed quite an audience. I'm sure it was very bad writing. Alas, I don't have any copies of them.
Posted by Carlene (Member # 2745) on :
I wrote awful poetry. Let's just say that when I was writing it, I really didn't understand what poetry was supposed to be (not that I'm claiming huge advances in this area), so I felt that free verse poetry was the way to go.
Having already admitted to a lack of understanding of poetry, I thought free verse meant I could write anything and it would be poetry. Basically I wrote complete sentences, but used no punctuation, and only put 2 to 3 words on each line. If I can bring myself to do it, I'll post some over in F&F.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
I actually have some poetry I probably wrote for a high school English class. It may be the only poetry I've ever written. I wouldn't say that I'm proud of it (partly because I'm not, and wouldn't be even if I really wanted to be a poet), but I'm not ashamed of it either. Discovering that surprised me enough that I posted them online shortly after I dredged them out of my stack of old assignments.
Even though I've never written much poetry, it's probably a fair sample of the kind of thing I wrote when I was younger. When I was a kid, I never wrote anything unless ordered to do so. I didn't really learn to take notes till I was in college. I did take notes of my own ideas sometimes, but they weren't written, they were drawn schematically with lots of arrows labeled with letters, numbers, or odd acronyms (occasionally expanded at the bottom of the page).
Even now, it isn't like I've been bitten by the writing bug. I do want to write. But it's a more considered thing. I believe that I should write, therefore I make an effort. It's not like I feel an impulse to write stuff down.
Posted by cvgurau (Member # 1345) on :
The first story I remember writing was about a dog somehow recieved radioactive superpowers and fought crime during the day. It was a page long. I was 9.
Then, in the fourth grade, I wrote a story about a kid who wished upon a star, got superpowers, and (surprise!) fought crime.
I kept with the superhuman stuff until middle school. Then, early in high school, I leaned towards vampires and werewolves (I wouldn't say obsesively, but...), and later, I switched to fantasy (I've since branched out, but I still write more fantasy than anything else.). I did one or two poems on my own, and a few for a creative writing class that I still have.
I will never post any of it ever ever ever.
I did a few more poems some time ago, when I was feeling kind of depressed. Bad as I am at poetry (believe me, it's bad), it's kind of uplifting.
Posted by Jaina (Member # 2387) on :
The first story I remember writing was about a prince, a princess, and a dragon. Except that the dragon wasn't bad, he was a vegeterian, and he baked the couple's wedding cake. Sounds original-ish, but I think I got it from an old book of my mom's and just changed a few things.
I wrote a lot of fanfiction in middle and high school. I'm not ashamed of it--it's what got me interested in writing in general. And if somebody could get me so involved in their characters that I couldn't get them out of my head, so I had to write more about them, well, I figure that's a good thing. Besides, no writing is a waste--I learned a lot about consistency and research when I was writing my fics.
I was never much of a poet. In fact, I hated writing poetry so much that when I was assigned to write a blank verse poem, I wrote it about how much I hated poetry and how bad I was at writing it. I managed to get an A, so I think the teacher didn't realize that I wasn't joking about hating poetry.
If I find anything like that around, I might post it... just to give you all a good laugh. I'll be laughing, too.
Posted by Jeraliey (Member # 2147) on :
When I was in my early teens, I wrote ::flinch::....Star Trek stories. Watch as my face turns fuscia.
Then my older brother turned to me after I told him one of my stories and asked me why I didn't make up my own universes; was I lazy? I credit him with giving me the initiative to create my own work.
I stopped writing creatively through high school and started again my sophomore year of college.
Posted by djvdakota (Member # 2002) on :
I very seldom wrote anything that wasn't assigned by a teacher, and most of what I wrote I've forgotten about.
Inspired by this and Mary's thread, I read through some old stuff I still have hanging around, and didn't even remember most of it.
Before I started writing in earnest again--it's been three years now--I hadn't written anything but the occasional scathing letter to the editor and a personal-therapy poem here and there since, well, since a college writing course.
I feel out of place among all you who have been driven to write for as long as you could put marks on paper.
Posted by pixydust (Member # 2311) on :
I'm with Dakota. And how odd is this: I only started writing seriously about three years ago too.
When I was young I tried to be deep and wrote unreadable, depressing poetry about death. But, I gave all that up in college for surfing.
One thing I did do though was read. I have sucked down a million books and I think that's really what gave me my passion. I still love to read more than anything else, even surfing. How droll is that?
Will: I love your song.
Posted by artistic_alexis (Member # 2748) on :
I was into script writing when I was young. When I was in 6th grade i made a sequal to the Wizard of Oz called Oz: Back in Action. It was a comedy where the Scarecrow was a Doctor, The Tin Man had a Tin Wife and was going to the Wiazrd to get a Tin kid... I even put Hans and Franz from Saturday Night Live in it. They wanted to be Ballerinas and not "macho men" so they had to go to the wizard.
In High School I wrote a feature length movie, but a bad computer crash and a broken floppy disk ruined that venture.
Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :
I also wrote parody songs about how ugly female classmates were, and how awful school was.
Violets is blue; roses is red. Bullfrogs is ugly and so is yo' head.
I'm still proud of this one.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
I started writing SF straight off. Terribly derivative stuff, with bad grammar and spelling. Rejected, and rightly so.
I'd like to think I've improved in the last thirty years, but I'm not even sure I spelled "derivative" right.
Posted by MCameron (Member # 2391) on :
When I was in high school, I started a lot of stories and never finished them. At the time, I thought that I was good at writing beginnings, but I could never figure out how to maintain the story through the middle to the end. Looking back at my starts, I have realized that I wasn't writing beginnings, I was writing prologues. No wonder I couldn't maintain the style for very long!
I still have trouble writing a satisfying ending, but at least I actually get to the ending nowadays.
--Mel
[This message has been edited by MCameron (edited August 06, 2005).]
Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :
When I was preteen, it was stories about cows having adventures. (My uncle's idea.)
When I was a teenager, it was quests; easy setup; incredibly boring implementation.
Later on, I'd easily find an interesting way to get characters into messes, but couldn't find an interesting way to get them out!
Posted by Warbric (Member # 2178) on :
In high school, I wrote about the ghost of a pilot shot down over North Vietnam who attended his own funeral. I also wrote some totally dreadful poetry that could only be of any use if sung through your nose while backed by steel guitars and fiddles.
Not long after that, though, I read something forgettable by Joel Rosenberg and proceeded to waste way too much time trying to create stories out of all the D&D characters from my wasted youth. (Leave it be, mikemunsil. I did NOT admit to BEING a wasted youth!)
I'm still trying to write fantasy today, but I'd like to think I've got a better sense of story than I did back then.
). I also wrote a few short stories that were character intro's for roleplaying games. People responded very well to what I had written and wanted me to do more. Now, I don't write poetry anymore, and I want writing as a lifestyle.