'Lol, well, just think back to when you were his age--I know the stuff I was writing in my late teens was absolute rot not fit to publish.' ~ well, i was always the darling of whatever writing teacher i had in school. my ninth grade teacher like to tear her hair out trying to get me to publish some stupid horror story, but i just wasn't interested. still, impressing teachers who read garbage all day wasn't terribly difficult, lol. i'd say it was just to motivate me were she not the only teacher. i'm not quite sure why i had a reputation as a 'writer' in school.
time for confessions and true stories....
i've written for money before. that is, a few times my schoolmates would commission a story from me for their creative writing class that they weren't interested in doing, always with the caveat, 'don't make it too good.'
one i apparently did make too good, for my best friend no less. he wasn't exactly the best and brightest. he actually needed the creative writing credit to graduate, which absolutely blows my mind. anyway, knowing how critical it was, his *mother* paid me to write a story for him to turn in. i wrote it, she paid me, he turned it in... and was rejected by the teacher. she thought he plaigarized it out of a magazine. so i had to go talk to her and tell her i helped him with the story. she wasn't stupid, she knew exactly what was going on, but she was pretty cool, too, and pretended to buy it.
i earned a couple of bucks in school writing for other people to turn in as their own work. i was almost busted big-time once as i used one story for a class, let my friend borrow it for another, who in turn let someone else borrow. problem was all three separate teachers taught their respective classes in the same damn hallway! fortunately, the story was altered just enough to avoid getting suspended. i'm positive that certain teachers expected more out of me in certain ways than they did the other brainless twits staring blankly back at them.
so while i've 'enjoyed' a certain kind of dubious success and reputation while young, i also learned some of the pitfalls, too, especially when, while in the course of self-publishing my book, i got bit by a dog. sad but true.
okay, i didn't graduate high school at the age of 15, *but* that a kid that age *began* writing a *bad* story that got sold, well, i have to be less than awed. i feel as if i could have done the same. i mean, i was writing bad stories long before that, lol. i remember in sixth grade i used to write a story a page at a time while my friend read them, so once he got through my horrible hand-writing i'd have another page done. now, while he was rather impressed by that, i never was with my own 'abilities,' such as they are/were. difference is my old stories were conan-based rip-offs while this guy's is star wars/LOTR/dragonlance/anne mccaffrey.
i know a lot of people don't start writing until later, but i started in the third grade one day as i was sick as a dog and bored out of my mind. it was a sci-fi story whose bad guys were called the 'grahams' because i couldn't think of a better name and i was eating graham crackers at the time (a practice i'm embarrassed to admit to still practicing: care to guess where the name 'ola' comes from?). (if ever i find those faded pages, i'll copy them down.) the point is, not everyone starts late: some start early. but, that doesn't mean it's worth reading, and the real story here is a kid finished a 544 page *novel*. short stories are *completely* unimpressive.
i'd probably have an ego, too. and with the money to go with it, i'd have completely self-destructed. he really can't win here. assuming he never grows into a great writer (which isn't assured by any means), but becomes just an average one, people will get bored with his fantasy novels, and he'll get a reality check if he expands out of sci-fi/fantasy. my advise for him is to invest well: people can be fooled by a kid, but now that he's 21 (according to his website), you're now playing with the big boys, and, like the saying goes, if you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch. we'll see if he proves capable of writing like an adult.
doesn't look good, i'm afraid, lol. you know, except for his money, fame, and women, i'd almost hate to be him.
