What and when was your first attempt at writing a novel?

It was 10nth grade, and I was fifteen at the time. There was this year-long school project, where you needded to choose a passion and work at it throughout an entire school year. I had started about 20 or so stories preivously, neer getting farther than about 15 pages, but here I decided to actually push forward. It turned out quite wel actually. 80,000 words more or less. It was my first serious attempt a finishing a story, and, though the book was pretty bad, it was a great learning experience.

Recreationally I first wrote about a character who went back in time after his father's murderer when I was 10 or so.
There was a heavy inspiration from Dragon Ball in regard to combat. I worked on it for two years sieving out its Dragon Ball roots, but eventually I abandoned it.
I actually ported the persona and physical appearance of the character into a new story, but through revisions only
his shell remains the same. It amazes me how much I've clung to him over the years... I mean he's essentially not the same person anymore but... xD

I was about seven. The story was a four and a half hour epic centered around miniature, anthropomorphic birds that lived aboard a jumbo jet. My lil' sib (5) and cousin (6) were enthralled. My grandmother sat in the front seat and transcribed it.

What can I say? It's the only way I could get any peace on car trips.

The first one I remember at least, was when I was fourteen. I watched a lot of tv shows like CSI and Criminal minds and the likes of it, and then I dreamed about a man that was the chief of some investigating team, and that he had a crush on a young police whom he was watching from a balcony, and a woman in his team named Toreclay. The dream inspired me so much I attempted to write a crime novel based on it, which was very cliché and didn't reach past three pages xD

My earliest attempt was about centaurs on an island. I can't really describe the plot because it had no plot. Like, at all. My mom used to bring my older brothers and me to Taekwondo with her, and I'd sit in the corner and write to keep myself occupied. (I also did really terrible illustrations in pen.) I was probably five or six, because I started riding lessons afterward, and I wasn't seven yet for those ...

My first attempt was sixth grade. We had to read SE Hinton's Outsiders and I saw that she wrote it when she was sixteen so I decided to try and do one too. I remember writing the first few chapters of this dystopian story that I lost. I asked my teacher to read it but I think she said she did but didn't, which I couldn't blame. I had sloppy hand writing.

The one I am writing currently. God is it scary.

I was nine when I decided I was going to be a writer. Things were sure simple back then weren't they?

I wrote a story about a monkey in alligator town, my grandma laminated it and everything, I hate when she brings it out to show everyone from time to time lol.

One of the earliest (serious) pieces I remember writing had to do with a girl being kidnapped by vampires, though I never got far enough to figure out why they had kidnapped her. I actually still have my old computer, like really old computer, I took all the files from it and transferred them onto my laptop in a folder called "old as shit"

The first story I actually finished writing was actually something I found started in that folder and rewrote so not a complete waste. I do kind of like going back and laughing at my own work from time to time and sometimes I see a bit of potential in the half assed ideas if I ever had a serious case of writers block I could probably tinker with my old ideas.

Picolo said:

It was 10nth grade, and I was fifteen at the time. There was this year-long school project, where you needded to choose a passion and work at it throughout an entire school year. I had started about 20 or so stories preivously, neer getting farther than about 15 pages, but here I decided to actually push forward. It turned out quite wel actually. 80,000 words more or less. It was my first serious attempt a finishing a story, and, though the book was pretty bad, it was a great learning experience.

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I was the same age when I finished my first novel. It was in two notebooks, all hand written. I filled a dozen notebooks in the next two years. I gave up writing senior year when my AP English teacher sucked all the fun out of it, and since I went to college for art history (I had a great art teacher), I never had to take any English courses. So it wasn't until after college that I got back into it, and I let my mom throw away all my notebooks in the meantime.

I sometimes wonder if what I wrote in those notebooks was any good, but at least it was good practice!

Summer of 1976; I was 15, living in the Mojave. I'd learned how to type in high school (about the only thing useful I ever learned there) and gotten a 1934 Royal KHM typewriter (the source of my pen name, and just like the one in my avatar). I wrote 1000 words a day that summer, single-spaced with small margins to save on paper.

It was an attempt at science fiction, set in the '90s, I think. My protagonist was crossing the country on the high-speed rail I thought we'd have by then, talking on his "pocket phone", and trying to quit smoking by using an electronic version of a cigarette that produced a supposedly-safe vapor.

It was probably pretty terrible; I remember enough to know I had no idea how to write in a readable style. The plot was haphazard at best, the ideas poorly worked-out. Part of it used a popular existing fictional world in a way I believe is now called "actionable copyright infringement".

I was about 80,000 words in when my dad burned the ms. No loss to the world. But, I wish I could recapture the enthusiasm, the lack of self-consciousness, the sheer pleasure I had in producing pages then. Just the act of producing an ever-lengthening story, in black and white on a growing stack of sheets, felt amazing. It helped that I had no idea how bad it was.

Now, at 55, I've sold some short stories but have yet to produce a full-length novel. This is the year.

Elementary School. I wrote a few short stories, and a bunch of poems. They sucked, but i've come a long way since. My first milestone was a short story in high school. My teacher announced its amazing quality in front of everyone. It was embarrassing.

I attempted my first novel in high school. The idea is still possible for a future series, but it would be the biggest excuse of a cliche piece ever. Until I find a new approach, it won't be appearing before my eyes anytime soon.

I don't even think I knew what a "novel" was in the first grade, but I remember filling up quite a few composition notebooks with a story. It was essentially a re-telling of the Star Wars saga, except with talking dogs instead of people. Gripping stuff, as I remember it.

First story was at age eight maybe. About an Inuit boy in an igloo. I took that grade by correspondence course as we lived far in the country then and my teacher wrote on my story that someday I might be a writer. After that, I always wanted to write.

When I was 3 or 4, I had a dream that there were toys floating in the sky. I tried to explain it to everyone around me. They thought I was talking about wanting to play with clouds or I wanted to throw my toys in the sky. I didn't have the vocabulary to correct them. I was getting so angry and frustrated. I was on the verge of a total meltdown. Greatest dream in my entire life, and nobody understood what I was talking about!

My mom gave me a sketch book and told me to draw pictures of what I was trying to talk about. Then I could point to the pictures and explain what each one was meant to be about. So I worked on it all day. And I remember the thrill I got showing the pictures to my grandfather and he could ask me questions about the pictures. Finally, after talking back and forth about each picture, my grandfather retold my story, and behold! He understood every detail of my dream! He told it back to me and it was very close to what I saw in my head! Then it was easy to tell the others about my dream.

To me, that's the entire purpose of writing. You've got something to say to the world and your job is to tell it so well that when another person reads what you wrote, they can see almost exactly what you saw when you thought about it yourself.

Uh, my first attempt was in high school, when I made efforts to write a story about an alien who hid on earth as a human, trying to get home. His unintentioned companion was a teenage runaway. It was complete crap, and I never got past the first few chapters. Then I tried to write a novel where a girl experienced the alternate universe (there was only one) where witches and Irish people were at war. Good, but I ran out of inspiration. The first "novel" I finished was a five part Mega Man fanfiction.

Hopefully my current novel will actually come to a completed state.

Mine was published last year. It's sequel, my second attempt comes out in 7 weeks.

All I remember is that I was in my early teens. I think. We had this desktop computer that was "trash" but still functioned. It sat in my brother's room. There was no mouse so I navigated everything using the keyboard.

My book was high fantasy about a knight apprentice named Kyle who was a big trouble-maker and none of the authorities took him seriously in anything. His squad/team went on some mission in which things went terribly wrong and he because the sole survivor. His personality/attitude changed afterwards.

Somehow he was seen in a different light and became leader of his own team. The book was about an upcoming war against another nation and the lives of his team.

Fun facts!

1) This was the last time my protagonist was a male in a story. From then on I wrote only about female protagonists.

2) Somehow it was easier for me to write pages after pages back in the day. I recall being able to do this notebooks in my late teens as well. It wasn't until after I finally left my rapist and depression that it became difficult for me to finish anything.

I miss those days (of writing). o.o

I wrote a little story about a horse named Charlie. I don't remember how old I was, nor do I remember if I finished it. It was pretty short.

Then in my teens I wrote a short novel about a talking car. I wish I still had it, I'd be so curious to read it now!

Simax said:

The first one I remember at least, was when I was fourteen. I watched a lot of tv shows like CSI and Criminal minds and the likes of it, and then I dreamed about a man that was the chief of some investigating team, and that he had a crush on a young police whom he was watching from a balcony, and a woman in his team named Toreclay. The dream inspired me so much I attempted to write a crime novel based on it, which was very cliché and didn't reach past three pages xD

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That you recognized after only three pages, that it was so cliche, etc, impresses me. Really, if I ever started something, I usually was so inspired by (fill in the blank) that I'd get waaaay farther than that before recognizing that sort of thing, especially when I just started.


My first attempt at writing a "novel" was probably when I was 7-9. I can picture the notebook I wrote it in and some of the scenes. I'd lean toward being 9. I'd written plenty of stories before that. I'm not sure if I considered any of them novels before then, but that was the one I thought to myself, "I'm going to write a novel, a real novel length thing. And it's not going to suck this time." I think I'd read Narnia and liked pokemon a bunch (which is what makes me think I was younger than 9). So basically, a girl somewhat magically ends up on this island inhabited by pokemon of my own creation, and there's a Bad Guy that needs to be stopped. I remember I had the more or less major plot worked out, but I never finished it.

The other thing that might be considered a more "real" attempt at a first novel was a co-written project, and it was terrible. Me and my friend both made up two characters, a girl and a boy each, set them at the same hoity-toity (sp?) academy, and would write a chapter for each of them and send it back and forth. That didn't last, which I'm painfully glad for. I think I had done a pretty good job when it came to some of my characters or the story (and trying to make things work with my friends characters, since we communicated no plot or character development ideas at all and just kinda had a plot bunny and just went for it back and forth). BUT the worst thing was the names. Especially my male protag, who I named something vaguely spanish sounding. And then I found out it was actually Japanese. Because I knew nothing about names, just made something up, and ran with it. Early high school

Story of my life. Which is why I take the effort to plot NOW. Because otherwise, oh god. I may be able to get people to keep reading, but I definitely had a problem with plot.

Then the one about a girl in some kind of place where everyone is frozen in the state of their death, which she tries to escape from (bleeding EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME btw because she was mortally stabbed and they were all stuck the way they were murdered). And twist! It's purgatory and.... something? No plot there EITHER.




BASICALLY. Yeah. Yeah I think I spent a lot of time really sucking at the writing thing. A LOT. (I'd get bored in class. Usually how this started. A class assignment, boredom on the bus, whatever. I ended up with a lot of stuff.)

The first time i remember, idk I must have been 11? That's when I got my typewriter. The first time I wrote a story on my own, I was probably 7.

I was 13-14 when I wrote my first novel. It was about 200 pages long typed. It was set during the 1920s and I don't think I did any research for it. Brilliant, right? I wrote another at 17 and 23 years old. Both truly terrible. I think was sort of crippled by the fact that I was reading too much classic literature to know what works for modern readers (among other problems). I knew they weren't up to snuff, though, so I never tried to do anything with them. I have written 2 more less terrible ones since then.

It is a little scary to think that writing seriously has been a 20-year journey for me just to get to the point where I even have something submission-worthy! In some ways, I envy the people who are starting as teens now for all the resources they have at their fingertips via the Internet.

My first attempt at writing a novel was an unmitigated disaster of a manuscript that had way too many main characters, an overreaching plot and failed to put any of the characters in interesting situations.

The idea behind it was simple(ish): Magic really existed in the middle ages and thereabouts, but it wasn't hocus-pocus; instead, it was technology used by time travelers.

Why the hell time travelers would be visiting the middle ages never really got answered. But one time traveler had to stop all the others, because they were screwing up the timeline, creating paradoxes, blah blah blah. It was, at best, a tired idea and I made the fundamental mistake of trying to keep that one big fact a secret until the big reveal at the end of the book, which would have read as a sucker punch to the genre fans who would have read it - if anyone had read it.

It ended up being about 120,000 words, and I can't even bear to slog through it myself, much less ask anyone else to do so. I don't really read fantasy books, but since I was considering it a sci-fi book (time travelers, and all), I convinced myself it was OK to write a pseudo-fantasy book. I was wrong.