Writing, for me, began a long time ago. I've always been a kid with an enormous imagination. At recess, I was always the one playing pretend restaraunt with my best friends instead of building with legos.
In 8th grade, all of the kids at my school had Macbooks. We never used these to do anything productive on them. Instead, my friends and I discovered this amazing site called Quizilla, where we'd take personality tests.
I, of course, soon became obsessed with the idea of creating personality quizzes. Soon, however, I discovered that there was something more to Quizilla. People wrote stories on them.
That was my first foray into the world of Harry Potter fanfiction and is, hands down, the reason I do what I do today. And what I'd like to do is sort of give little samples of my writing over the years, sort of like a journey through the years of my writing. So here we go.
Age 13
Excerpt from Chapter One of my Harry Potter fanfiction, expertly title "Secrets in the Dungeon":
You step out of the taxi car to see the magestic Hogwarts castle in front of you.
Who are you? you are Leah King, a 16 year old girl. You have shoulder length blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes and a mysterious air about you that makes you very unique. You are 5 feet 6 inches are quite slim.
So anyway, what the heck were you doing stepping out a TAXI car on your way to Hogwarts? Weeelll...your parents just died (no thanks to Voldemort) and you had to come live with your aunt and uncle who lived in England! You are originally American, but since your Aunt and Uncle are your last living relatives, you must transfer magic schools. Onto the story!
*Sigh...* "Why did Mom and Dad have to go off and get killed! I had such a great life in America...and...now I'll never get to see Henry again" you think to yourself. Henry is your old boyfriend. You slowly walk up the steps to Hogwarts. "Argh, this is so embarrassing" you think. Finally you find the great hall. You push open the door and you see that there are a few first years still getting sorted. But everyone isn't looking at them. They are looking at you. "AhHHHH noooo!! This is EXACTLY what I didn't want!!!" you scream in your head while you make your way slowly over to Professer Dumbledore.
As you can see, I was into the whole 2nd person narrative thing. After this attempt at HP fanfiction, which lasted 18 torturous chapters...I moved onto original fiction. I started a story called "Will I?" about a girl who went to this fancy actors boarding school...and instantly was cast in this huge film and became friends with this guy who turned out to be some huge movie star, blah blah blah.
Age 14
I then started what would be my project for the next two/three years: Re: I Love You. About 3 girls and 3 guys who became penpals. At first the plotline was ripped off badly from Jaclyn Moriarty's "The Year of the Secret Assignments." Here is an excerpt from the 2nd draft of R:ILY. I don't even have the original draft, which was started when I was 13.
Your eyes opened wide. It was the 2nd week of 10th grade. You wondered what had woken you up. Then it became louder. Your mom Katherine was calling your name loudly up the stairs. <br><br>
"Lydia! Lydia! Get downstairs right now! You're way late!" she shouted. You groaned. Today was the day that your English was starting a pen pal project with the dreaded All Boys prep school, "Pennline Prep for Boys". From your first hand experience, the boys in Pennline were jerks who were not to be trusted. All they thought of was the next girl that they were going to be with and the next basketball/football/soccer/hockey game that they were going to win. Your entire school, "Octavian Private School", an all girls school was programmed to hate all the boys from Pennline. Why did your teachers think that just because you were going to start a pen pal project with them, it would instantley make the hatred between the two schools stop? So you got up, rolled your eyes and got dressed quickly. When you came down, your mom was smiling, and handed you two peices of hot buttered toast. Your brother Ben was sitting in his chair, eating some as well. You went over to him and ruffled his hair. He was 8 years old and kind of a pain most of the time, but you still loved him. You quickly put your long white blonde hair in a messy ponytail and blinked your blue gray eyes, taking the toast.
As you can see, I was still into the 2nd person thing. ("Will I?" was also written in 2nd person.)
Age 15
For a few months I forgot about Quizilla. Then, a new trend rushed over the website and I started reading the works of my muse: xBangxYourexDeadx. I gobbled up her MCR fanfiction and I knew instantly I wanted to write about Gerard Way, even though I didn't even know anything about him. And I wanted to write in the same style as her.
So I created a new account. And I started writing "Bang Bang My Baby Shot Me Down." Here is an excerpt from Chapter One. See if you can spot the difference between my writing styles...haha.
I sighed. Listening to depressing music. Ha. I felt so emo.
But look at me. What am I wearing? A school uniform. Well not exactly. Pleated skirt, sweater and maryjanes. I feel like a school girl.
Who wants to rape me?
Just kidding.
So my life isn't that bad. I have a nice, caring family, which is more than I can say for most families. I'm a little overdramatic, I guess. I like making my life worse than it is. Maybe it's because I'm not the girl who shows who she really is on the outside. On the inside? I love punk and rock music. The Blood Brothers, The stills, The Cure, Sex Pistols. You name it. On the outside? Another quiet, studious girl. The guy I like would never notice me.
For some reason, after two years of near invisibility on Quizilla, "Bang Bang My Baby Shot Me Down" skyrocketed to number 3 on the Highest Rated list on Quizilla when I was on chapter, like, 22. And that's when things seemed to get serious. I started writing Re: I Love You more seriously.
Until...what?
I got a boyfriend. And then all of a sudden, for months, I STOPPED. WRITING. My entire life revolved around this boy for six months. I abandoned quizilla and when I went on, I was scared to check my messages. So I just disappeared, quietly.
Age 16
When my boyfriend and I broke up (and a lot of other bullshit went down), I came back to writing. I moved quizilla accounts to start over. The lack of instant fame was a little terrifying, and I didn't have a thousand people messaging me everyday to tell me they loved this chapter and that chapter of whatever MCR fic I was writing. But I just said whatever and tried to write this time. Like, really tried. And so I rewrote Re: I Love You.
Here is an excerpt from Chapter One of rewritten R:ILY.
There is a strange routine to my life that seems to follow me every day. Lydia wakes up. Lydia gets ready. Lydia goes to school. Lydia comes home. Lydia does homework. Lydia goes to sleep. I sort of wonder occasionally where I picked this routine up, but I guess in my life, things seem to fall into place without my consent. Sometimes, I'll be doing something, and then I realize I never even knew I was doing it. Sometimes I just go about my life so blankly. Most of the time it doens't bother me, but sometimes...sometimes I sit back and I think to myself, How did my life get to be so boring?
I mean, I used to have an exciting life, but that excitment was well...negative. And some excitement is bad excitement. And sometimes one needs to break away from this so called excitement. But then, when you've got away from all the bad, you realize what a hole it has made in your life.
And then something happened. I had a very strange dream. What it was essentially about was me and this guy. And we were walking on a beach, and we came to this tiny beach house. And we laid down inside of it and I could just feel love all over. And then the other part of the dream was me walking up stairs to this mall to get something for him, but I felt constantly tired and had to sit down.
The next day, I wrote Chapter One of I Still Remember. Here is an excerpt.
He was rich. I could tell the moment he stepped out of his BMW and onto the driveway to the huge, abandoned-for-years, Victorian style mansion that he'd be inhabiting now, that his family was loaded. And although I didn't see his face, I caught a glimpse of dark brown hair and pale skin. He was tall, and his shoulders were broad. He had on a black suit that looked new and reeked of Armani. I stood at my bedroom window, staring at him as he stood staring at his surroundings. I didn't know him and already I loathed his presumabley pompous nature and arrogant way of going about his daily routine. But I couldn't stop staring.
That was my first glimpse of Otis Geoffrey Chevalier. And it would not be my last.
And that was basically the end of it all. This story changed the way I wrote. Forever.
Age 17
Now I was growing older. And technically, I started Breathing Underwater when I was 16, but I was almost 17 and I was 17 for a lot of writing it. So I consider it for 17.
Here is an excerpt of Chapter One of Breathing Underwater:
No new text messages. Figures. My parents get a divorce and I have to move to the other side of this bum-fuck town with my mom and my sister, and no one sends me anything. No hugs, no kisses, no love and certainley no wishes of good luck. But then again, I live in a world where image is everything, a world I haven't fit into since probably even before 5th grade. Because when it comes to image, I know I'm a freak. I'm way too skinny to be normal, expecially for a boy my age. I'm too tall, gigantically tall, 6 feet tall, with awkward, messy blonde hair, blue-grey eyes and thin wire framed glasses. The biggest compliment I've ever recieved was that I'm pretty. Because that's definitely what a 15 year old boy wants to hear. That he's pretty. At worst, I've been mistaken for a girl. I'm often called by my sister's name, Delilah, but my name, Devon, is just about as androgynous as I am.
I played around a lot with that story. I switched often between past tense to describe actions and present tense to describe things going on inside Devon's head. This was the first time I'd written from a story from a boy's POV only (I'd written a story when I was 15 and it had switching POVs from a girls to a guys). This story is basically autobiographical - it's a little hard to explain how, but either way. This was sort of my Magnum Opus and kind of still is.
While ISR changed the way I wrote, BU changed me. I still feel proud of that story, because there are a lot of good things about it.
And then for the next few months, I just fucked around. I was on Mibba by this point. I didn't write anything interesting or anything I actually wanted to continue. I started a couple good stories, one called Metamorphasis, that I still like and then Quid Pro Quo, which is sort of a crowd favorite. Anyway, I kept starting stories and deleting them and at one point I had four stories going on, all that I hated.
Frusterated, I started a story called "A Sorta Fairytale," where I tried my hardest to recreate that feeling I'd created in I Still Remember. I was upset that I'd lost that sort of innocent, carefree way of writing. But A Sorta Fairytale was cliche and forced. I posted it on FictionPress, and someone pointed out that it was cliche and sounded like I was trying too hard.
I was so mad for a few hours. And then I realized that they were right.
So I deleted all my stories. Went on a two day hiatus. And came back with Shadows of the World. And that changed WHAT I wrote.
Age 18
And now here I am, 18 years old. When I was 13 years old I was writing a stupid Harry Potter fanfiction that was cliche in every way - too racy for a 13 year old to be writing, too ICK for anyone to ever read. And over the years my writing has evolved into something that I am proud of right now.
Will I always be proud of it? Probably not. I was, at one point, proud of my MCR fanfiction, and now I find a lot of it cringeworthy. I do appreciate the good things in it, but you know.
I think the point of this was to tell you that if you're younger than me, don't fret. Just take a look at what a crap writer I was when I was younger. If you stick with it, if you love writing, you will excell, faster than me. You will exceed me quickly.
I liked taking this journey. I still like going through all my old stuff. I save EVERYTHING - well except that first draft of Re: I Love You (and I still hate myself for NOT saving it).
Hope you enjoyed reading this.
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