Memories of my First Writings

We're at the halfway point for the A to Z Challenge. Yay! Congratulations to everyone for getting this far. :)

M is for Memories of my First Writings

When we’re busy marketing our books, writing out current works-in-progress, blogging, tweeting and posting status updates, we often forget about how we started. Not the first book or short story we’ve published, but our beginnings, our pre-author days. It is important to remember when we first developed our love for writing and to even reexamine our early creations.

I am going to share my memories from my pre-author days with you. I hope you enjoy them!

The first story I ever wrote and illustrated was “The Kids and the Sea”. I believe I was about six-years-old. Below is the story for your amusement. I fixed the spelling errors to make it easier for you to read.

The Kids and the Sea:

One day two kids were doing nothing so they went outside to play.

So they went out to play so they walked for awhile.

And they walked and while they were walking they saw fish jumping. They go closer and closer and closer and they walked up to the sea. And they got on a boat and they sailed.

They threw rocks, they fished, they took a stick and got a fish, they took paddles and paddled, and they also swam.

And they sailed back home.

And they got off the boat.

And they walked back home.

THE END!

In first grade, when I was seven, I wrote a more structured story in class. My favorite part of the story is right in the beginning: “One day, at night”. It gets me every time! And check out how I spelled “torturing”. Based on the ending, it’s safe to say I liked morbid stories even at a young age. HAHA!

There’s no title, but I’ve taken up calling it “The Bad Toy”.

The first full poem I wrote was at the age of nine. It is called, “Here in the Grass”. I wrote it while sitting on a little grass mound beside my childhood home, not a hill. And I didn’t see a single thing I wrote about. 

You’ll see what I mean:

“As I sit here in the grass,

I see butterflies dancing in the sky,

flies buzzing by and birds soaring up above.

A doe and fawn prance in the woods,

rabbits run in holes and cats jump by.

I sit here in the grass,

 on the very top of a hill,

watching the world around me and life happening.

In the stream before me,

fish glide in and out of rocks,

frogs lay lazily on lily pads,

and ducks float on the surface.

I am just a little kid,

sitting here in the grass,

but I know things are happening all around the world.

Cars drive by, planes fly high, and trains move on tracks,

kids play hide-and-seek and people walk hand-in-hand,

while I am just sitting here in the grass

looking at the world, looking at life and thinking about mine,

but I am just a little kid sitting here in the grass.”

Quite an imagination, eh?

When I was in tenth grade, I entered a contest run by the VFW. The topic was: What Freedom means to me. My essay won first place in my high school and third place in the district. Part of my award was a beautiful plaque which still hangs on my wall. For my essay, I literally rewrote the Declaration of Independence. Yes, I was ambitious. 

In tenth grade, I wrote articles for my school newspaper, but by far the greatest moment of my pre-author days happened when I was twelve. I started writing a series of books and I still have all the notebooks. It was this series that deepened my passion for writing. You can read more about that here: Catching a Spark

Image by Chrys Fey.

Thank you for taking this memory trip with me. I hope you had fun!

SHARE: Your memories from your pre-author days. I’d love to hear them!

A to Z Blogging Challenge:

A: Author Photo Tips

B: Boost Your Writing Brain Power

C: Children’s Books (How to Write)

D: Dangers Writers Face

E: Eating and Writing

F: Fairy Tales (How to Write)

G: Gadgets for Bloggers

H: Horror (How to Create)

I: Inheriting the Writing Gene

J: Journal Writing

K: Kissing Scenes (How to Write)

L: Life of a Writer