Who holds onto their earliest stories?

Vincent · Nov 7, 2006

I've had a bit of a surprise just now.

I've been down at my old home in the country to see my family the last week or so, and today I came across a drawer full of old school books and papers. In amongst it all I've found three stories, going back 16 years or more. I'm sitting here right now, reading what I forgot I ever wrote.

I have a very short illustrated story written when I was eight or nine, about a Martian explorer who visits Sydney and discovers intelligent life. The drawing is better than the story, unfortunately.

Then I have 'The Fire', about a careless motorist who starts a devastating bushfire that sweeps across the countryside, threatening a small town. I actually remember writing this one, I was 12 years old and was the first student in class allowed on one of the school's computers to type it out. I averaged about 2 words a minute, I recall.

Next up is 'Invasion of the Ants', which couldn't have been written much later. Seems to be the start of a long story about a 'hive nation' that escapes it's homeworld's nuclear war, only to get attacked as they try to land their 'flying mountain' in the Caribbean during the height of the Cuban missile crisis. Nifty. Maybe I'll finish it.

Anyway, I'm just taking a stroll down Nostalgia Lane, and wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience. Or are these clumsy first attempts the sort of thing you'd rather burn and try to forget?

SpookyWriter · Nov 7, 2006

I know what you mean. I too have stuff (unpublished) work from my college days in the early eighties. I could probably clean them up and submit. Nah. I have dozens of completed stories on hard disk, floppy, and stashed across the internet for safe keeping.

Matter of fact, I was reading something I had written way back in 1992.

Pass them on or publish? What would you do?

Vincent · Nov 7, 2006

Hey, would this have been better placed in the roundtable? I wasn't really thinking. Feel free to nudge it around.

SpookyWriter · Nov 7, 2006

beezle said:
Hey, would this have been better placed in the roundtable? I wasn't really thinking. Feel free to nudge it around.

Oh boy, I had a girl friend once who did the same thing daily. Pushy pushy little thing she was...errr..

Vincent · Nov 7, 2006

TsukiRyoko · Nov 7, 2006

I do. I have stories clear back from the third grade- which are surprisingly morbid, may I add. I love reading my old stories, i can see how much I've improved

Mandy-Jane · Nov 7, 2006

I found some of my old stuff a few weeks ago when I was cleaning out my filing cabinet. All I can say is, thank God I gave up writing short stories and took up plays instead!

PeeDee · Nov 7, 2006

Funny you should mention this. I'm currently packing up all my stuff to move to our new digs, and one of the boxes I opened up was the one where I've kept all my old stories. I know that I have probably 95% of the stories I've ever written, all bundled away in different places.

In this box, I found the first story I ever wrote. It was a Star Wars story, it was about a hundred and twenty pages of tiny hand-writing (college ruled paper; even when I was young, I didn't think much of wide rule). It was about the Rebellion's construction of a Death Star, about why they felt they had to do this, what happened with it, and so on. I wrote two sequel stories, each one longer than the previous.

They all had beginnings, middles, and definitive endings. They had characters that were unique, some of them Star Wars characters, most of them my own. The dialogue wasn't always brilliant, but it wasn't actually TOO terrible.

The covers were done on tracing paper, using bits of different pictures which I assembled into these explosive covers.

I love it.

TsukiRyoko · Nov 7, 2006

I have quite a few boxes full of stories like that. I have entire notebooks (also college ruled, coincidentally. I think wide rule just gives an excuse to write in smaller amounts with more satisfaction.) I have thick construction paper title sheets, all colored masterfully with colored pencils or Crayola markers. At least 40% of these stories are fanfiction, and the rest is either pretty untasteful poetry, short stories and prose, and I think I have about 6 or 7 "novels" (pretty lengthy, too, one of them coming in at a whopping 19 notebooks). I have at least 10 boxes piled up full of these notebooks, right next to my 4 massive bookshelves. My room and it's 10x8 feet of glory are quite proud of the literary clutter.

Rachael · Nov 7, 2006

I still have the story that I told my mother to write down for me before I could write. I was three. It was about Kathy swinging on the big swings with the big kids and then having good food for dinner.

AnnaC · Nov 8, 2006

Early Work

I've held on to many of my earliest stories. One of them I wrote when I was nine years old, based on the Walter Farley "Black Stallion" books! As another author commented, it really is interesting to go back and re-read those older works to see how much I've grown as a writer.

Unique · Nov 8, 2006

Nope. Not too many.
Cave walls are kind of hard to tote around.

Carrie in PA · Nov 8, 2006

I have most of my old stuff. It's fun to go back and read.

aadams73 · Nov 8, 2006

I have everything I've ever written, but I refuse to torture myself by going back and reading it. It makes my eyes bleed and my teeth hurt.

Freckles · Nov 8, 2006

I know the feeling. A few months ago, I was cleaning out my drawer and found some stuff I'd written while on the high school newspaper. I had to chuckle... so elementary!

WackAMole · Nov 8, 2006

I hold on to mine, and when I feel like the stuff I am writing is crap, I read back through the older stuff and it becomes so clear how much my writing has grown, that I get my confidence back!

So yeah, as embarassing as it is, I just CANT throw it away.

Freckles · Nov 8, 2006

WackAMole said:
I hold on to mine, and when I feel like the stuff I am writing is crap, I read back through the older stuff and it becomes so clear how much my writing has grown, that I get my confidence back!

So yeah, as embarassing as it is, I just CANT throw it away.

Nicely put! Seeing how far you've come makes you feel soooo much better!

awatkins · Nov 8, 2006

Ya know, I think the Roundtable would be a great place for this. Hang on everybody...I'll port the thread over. Please remain seated and keep your arms and head inside the car until it comes to a complete stop. Thank you.

Shadow_Ferret · Nov 8, 2006

Funny. A few months ago I found an old plastic file cabinet at my Mom's and it contained a lot of my writing from high school and a lot of my first rejection notices.

I was thinking of framing them along with my first ever check.

ChaosTitan · Nov 8, 2006

All of my old stories are stashed beneath my bed in a plastic tub. I like to pull them out once in a while and laugh at myself. Many of them were "homage" stories, written during a current teenage obsession (usually another book or a TV show). Not fanction, but not quite original. I took the kernal of the other work and reinvented it (my versions of The Outsiders, The Young Riders, The Justice League of America, etc...).

One thing that hasn't changed over time is my tendency to beat on my characters. I just love angst.

LitFa · Nov 8, 2006

I wrote a horror novel in two months during my college winter break. The next year when I read it, I noticed something very important about it. IT SUCKED! big time. My family was so nice to tell me that it was great, but they lied. The concept maybe was cool but the execution was terrible. Since then I have learned more about the craft of novels (hopefully). I think it is still lurking on one of my disk, all the printouts are trashed though. A short story I wrote when I was 12 on the other hand received all positive feed back from my whole college writing class. Go figure, maybe I reached my peak at 12?

Gigi Sahi · Nov 8, 2006

I have stories over 20 years old - from my teenage years. I read them over every now and again. It's interesting to see how much I've grown as a writer and as a person. Whenever I read them, I feel like I've traveled back in time. I can usually remember what inspired the piece.

In a novel I'm working on, the MC is a teenager. I've been able to draw on my early writings to "get inside her head" and develop the character.

John61480 · Nov 8, 2006

Well, a year ago I went back and re-read my first novel—a fantasy novel—I wrote six years ago. I became so disgusted that I threw it away, along with all the drafts and even the screenplay version! See, that was my first attempt at writing something (I was attempting something along the lines of LOTR) and I couldn't let go. I re-wrote it many times in '00 and I had a two drawer file cabinet somewhat filled with many of the revisions.

But I dumped it. It was a way to come to grips with my writing self. I spent so much time on that one story rather than studying the craft or writing other stories...I don't know. Re-reading it made me sick. I wrote so horribly. Yet it made me feel better knowing I didn't have that baggage anymore. Now that it's done, I feel no regret.

Freckles · Nov 8, 2006

LitFa said:
I wrote a horror novel in two months during my college winter break. The next year when I read it, I noticed something very important about it. IT SUCKED! big time. My family was so nice to tell me that it was great, but they lied. The concept maybe was cool but the execution was terrible. Since then I have learned more about the craft of novels (hopefully). I think it is still lurking on one of my disk, all the printouts are trashed though. A short story I wrote when I was 12 on the other hand received all positive feed back from my whole college writing class. Go figure, maybe I reached my peak at 12?

Hey, don't sell yourself short. I'm sure you have many, many more years of writing success ahead of you. Ever thought of rewriting that horro novel?

Simon Woodhouse · Nov 8, 2006

I didn't start writing until five years ago. However, I did dabble in poetry and song writing from my late teens all the way through my twenties. But luckily none of this stuff has survived. Sometimes novel writing can be difficult, but I tip my cap to anyone who can pen a decent poem – I certainly couldn't.

Who holds onto their earliest stories?

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