How to Lose Friends and Make People Laugh

[megwrites]

So, truepenny was pickin' up what matociquala was throwin' down. So I decided to mosey on over and smell what the Rock was cookin'.

And it smelled of the hot, savory scent of public self-humiliation.

So I had to get me a piece of that, yo.

(Today's theme, if you haven't guessed it is: humiliating yourself in public)

Therefore, I will attempt to make the Earth swallow me whole by recounting for you the first things I ever wrote.



I don't have the actual notebooks/folders they were in, because in my own personal archaeology, they're in the burn layer entitled "First Movement of Mom". In which she moved and got rid of everything I considered remotely valuable. So there's a large part of my life for which there is no physical evidence. I now sorta know how people who go through housefires and lose all their pictures feel (sorta, trust me, losing everything is much worse!)

And nothing I do have access to I can consider old enough for this challenge. Unlike a lot of people that I'm reading about, I did a lot of my best work long hand and on paper. This was due to the fact that my family shared the computer and there's something inherently embarrassing about admitting to your *mom* that yes, you're writing a story about a space princess.

I actually did type some stuff before we got our computer. On a typewriter.

Given the choice, I'd rather get caught with weird porn.

*ahem* Moving swiftly along...

Technically, my first fiction writing came in 1st grade. For Halloween, we all made little books which were filled with ghost stories. My ghost story was very unscary. It was about what happened when one little ghost and one little skeleton got left behind when all the other ghosts and skeletons went off to scare people. They made friends. It meandered after that. I was in 1st grade, and my story was much different from everyone else's I remember that much.

In second grade, we had little "journals" for class. And since I had no life experience I felt worth recounting, whenever a topic would come up (mudpuddles, days of the week), I'd make up stories. Because I felt (and still do to an extent) that my actual life was not worth the paper I'd write it on.

By fifth grade I was up to the *hard* stuff. Fanfic, man. In fifth grade I discovered fanfiction, and it was the sweet, sweet delicious crack that I just knew I'd be doing forever. I wrote first, IIRC, a Ghostwriter fanfic. Then one for Power Rangers. Then one for SeaQuest. The only thing I can recall about these were that they all centered around a female heroine who was stunningly like me and I became stylistically impressed by the sentence "Dagwood frowned", left all on it's lonesome. It struck me as remarkably brief and sturdy and *wow*, it seemed very cool.

My first full out attempt to something *non*-fanfic was in 6th grade. It was a story about a girl, Jusintine, who everyone made fun of, who didn't like her life and was suddenly kidnapped by aliens who were human!aliens, one of whom was a king and magically she discovers she's actually a princess who was sent to Earth because there was a war once a long time ago and they were afraid the bad people would kidnap the princess, so they hid her on Earth and were coming back for her because only SHE could fully defeat the bad people (I forget who they were or why they were bad, but they were). There was, of course, a whirlwind romance with the captain of the king's elite guard, and she was bestest friends with everyone and there were ceremonies and I remember lots of insta-love. Which is about as good as insta-coffee.

(Ohhhhh the pain! It's burning my retinas!)

After that, it gets quite scary. Although, to my credit in 7th grade I looked back on it and thought "hmm, wouldn't it be the most creative thing EVAH if the king was actually evil?".

That was also when I decided that I *would* write a novel. From this goal, I have not strayed. I've taken breaks were all I tried writing were short stories and outlines, but always, always in my mind I've said, "I should try writing a novel this time!".

And around the 7th grade, I discovered teh_interweb. The next story, IIRC, was about dragons. Then after that, lots and lots of fanfic. Then my sophmore year, I experimented with writing a play (I'm feeling kinda sick here) and writing short stories that were funny and pithy. One very cringeworthy memorable attempt: "The Backpack Boyfriend". It starred the guy I was sorta seeing at the time (does it count as dating if you don't even like each other?).

Also, interspersed in this was lots and lots of rancid poetry which was all either morbidly boring, direct lifts of other people's stuff, or incoherent attempts to wrangle with concepts I didn't actually understand.

From then on it's just gone downhill continued. I'd REALLY REALLY like to think that I've done better since then.

I can't say I've ever lifted directly from an author.

Okay, that's a lie. I totally gakked from Anne McCaffrey like she was the only one speaking the English language, man. And not the Harper Hall stuff, either. I went in for the Talent Series. But I can't think of any others that I accidentally or purposely took things directly from. I can think of ideas and styles and tricks that I gakked, but they were from a myriad of sources.



There. Now that that's done, I'd like for my f-list to get in on the embarassment.

How'd you get into writing and what were the first things you wrote? Exerpts or summaries.