Friday, April 8, 2011

Friday Flashback: 8th Grade Fiction

When I was in 5th grade, I was advised to keep every scrap of my writing. "You never know what you'll need for inspiration later," my mother said as she gave me a file cabinet to keep it all in.

I took that advice to heart and as a result, I have EVERY scrap of my writing - especially my middle school writing, which, let me just say, is the most boring writing ever.

At the age of 14, I was obsessed with naming characters and made sure to have at least twenty main characters per book just so I could name all of them. And list all those names within the first two pages. Invigorating stuff, I tell ya! Who needs plot?

If a story survived those first two pages, the rest of it tended to look something like this (a sample from my 8th grade fiction folder):

Your heart was hammering in your chest as you read this, wasn't it? Palms tingling with fear? Scream caught in your throat? Yeah, that wildly lurking mirror of night... you gotta watch out for it. At the tender age of fourteen, my two biggest writing influences were VC Andrews and Victoria Holt. Is that obvious?

Sadly, the only writing I finished back then was my About the Author page...

How funny that a decade later I graduated college with a degree in Creative Arts, my emphasis being art, English lit and children's theatre. I haven't changed much...

Happy Friday, folks! I woke up today thinking it was Thursday, sulked for a few minutes and then remembered it was Friday. Oh, happy day! I am ready for the weekend, how about you?

xoxo,

9 comments:

AnnieMay said...

Well, as you may have guessed, I loved it. My knees were knocking and I was shaking in my boots. Thanks for sharing your blast from the past. I know I always enjoy reminiscing about the good ol' days and your mom was right- you never know when you'll find some inspiration in those old lose pages of thought. Glad you shared that with us Marise, you've sure got a knack for writing :) xoxoxo

Meeling said...

Scary stuff....I almost dropped my cup of coffee! Lol...too cute....I love it that you have all your writing, that's so cool.

You look pretty awesome in your photo too. ;-)
(I think I burned my middle school pics. :-D)

Happy weekend to you too...yippee for Fridays!!

Tia Colleen said...

I love it when you share old writings. <3

Julie Dao said...

That was so scary and epic. You were an amazing writer! I think we all start out heavily influenced by certain authors, and then develop our own style from there. I've kept all of my old writing, too! I wrote author pages, book jacket summaries, and the summary for my movie adaptations of my books. LOL. I was *slightly* ambitious!

mshatch said...

I like your friday flashbacks. They're fun :)

Amie Kaufman said...

Oh, love the flashbacks! I love that you still have all this stuff! I think what we're all really wondering here, though, is what happened next?

Unknown said...

Ahaha, Amie, I never wrote what happened next! I don't think I even knew :D

Thanks you guys! I'm glad you like these, too :)

Unknown said...

Great flashback! And I've definitely read worse writing from adults no less. Your about the author page is awesome:)

One Woman's Thoughts said...

A sweet story of inspiration and hopes and dreams. I loved your author's bio too!

In my elementary school, for Easter, we would decorate paper plates with construction paper and make them into hats by tying them around our chins with crepe paper. Then have a parade through school. A silly ritual, but it got the kids excited (yes, both boys and girls made these hats) and it was a mazing to see the creativity as well as the hilarious.

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