My Writing Story ~ Part 1

 



Today's article is about "My Writing Story" aka "The History of How I Happened to Begin Creative Writing as a Hobby." I was just attempting to give this article a longer title just like some of the older history books. Just pretend that this is a history article, but only about me. :) Part 2 will be posted in two weeks after a special Thanksgiving article.

 

My brother and I wrote scripts about our stuffed animals since I was eight years old. They were about ten pages and as I look back on them now, they are filled with a lot of strange aspects and discrepancies in the story. I may write an article on those problems later. But that was my first start in writing dialogue and even today those stories give me an example of light-hearted dialogue. 

 

In fifth grade, I had a few assignments for Penmanship class to write a story from a prompt they would give. One of those prompts had to do with a person walking down a dark and silent hallway to open a door. I had to write what was inside the room this person opened. I don't have a copy of that story anymore, but I wrote something about how there was a surprise party in the room. I wasn't into murder mysteries as of then, so I wouldn't have written something about a murderer or a dead body waiting in the room.

 

There was one other prompt that I did for my Grammar/Composition class. I had to write a story about a wise gorilla and a foolish monkey. I wrote a little something and then one of the other students read his story. I can remember what his story was about, but I can't even remember what my story was about because I liked his story so much, I completely plagiarized his story to turn into my teacher.

 

Fortunately, I'm homeschooled. I watch a video from a real school, but my dad who grades my work doesn't watch my videos, so he will never know unless he is reading this. I won't recount what the other student's story was because it is completely irrelevant to my writing life except for the fact that I know not to plagiarize now. Don't worry.

 

There was one prompt in my Penmanship class that kick-started my whole writing story. I had to write a story about somebody's vehicle having a flat tire in the middle of a safari trip. The question I needed to answer was "How do you get home?" My textbook included a picture of two guys standing next to a safari Jeep with a flat tire. One was scratching his head, and the other was taking pictures with his camera.

 

So, I wrote a three-page story on notebook paper called "African Safari." It was about two brothers who were wildlife photographers in Africa, and they get home due to a friend they cross paths with on the savannah. Of course, the characters were my stuffed animals again. I only wrote stuffed animals as my characters until seventh or eighth grade.

 

It sounds like a pretty simple story, but this is a huge milestone in my writing story because it's the first story (not script) that I still have copies of. From that point, I started keeping most of the stories I wrote. I don't believe I have the original story still, but I have one or two rewritten versions: one a story and the other a script. I will try to post some snippets from the story and the novel I am currently writing.

 

I have some really strange stories that date to around this time (See? I told you this would be a history article of sorts). I wrote two brief biographies of my stuffed animals and a few random stories about some kids that were the friends or more like the "imaginary friends" of the stuffed animals (don't ask how we kept track of them). My favorite was "The Pet Show" in which I partially plagiarized a Junie B. Jones book.

 

I just realized that I spent 90% of the whole article writing about my elementary stories. I'm very sorry, but I am going to write about my teenage years of writing in the next article. To end this article, I am going to include an excerpt from "African Safari." This is from the third or fourth rewrite of the story. I hope you enjoy them and I'd love to hear any advice about the snippets. Also, in the excerpt below, there is a Star Wars reference, of course, so comment below what you think that is.

 

 

Through the piercing heat of Kenya, emerged Speedy and Blueberry, weary from their last expedition. To meet them at the door of the African Biological Center was Elamus. As a former police chief and student of Greek mythology, he sent his employees on dangerous exploits. "So did you find 'em, boys?" he asked.

 

"Well, uh, no. Uh, you see, we told you that meilooruns are a fictional fruit from pop culture, not Greek mythology. And we also told you that the Southern Jungle was dangerous, filled with poisonous frogs and spiders. We got chased out by a lion, and we ran back out," Blueberry said sheepishly but firmly as Speedy nodded in agreement.

 

Feeling very disappointed, Elamus replied, "Fine, I suppose since you're too scared, I'll do it myself."