Time Machine!
I pulled out all the old notebooks, flist! All of them! I wanted to reflect fondly on how far my writing has come since I started that first novel (*cough* soap opera *cough*) in 9th grade. Presented for your perusal, with supporting images (the images are actually huge and can be clicked for easier reading), I give you my oeuvre!
The first thing I remember writing for myself (ie. not for an assignment) was a novel, entitled "The Best Years of Our Lives?" I was adorably cynical for a naive 14 year old. That first attempt was started on an electric typewriter. It was a daisy-wheel and the lag that often accompanied typing was mind-numbing. I can't find any of those very first pages, but suffice it to say that the first 200 pages were later rewritten ("tightened up") to about 35 pages. Here's page 63 of the first pass!
I'm no longer sure who is in this scene! Note the stunning lack of anyone said or narrative. I hated writing "Ash said", so I would just have the person before say the name of the next person. That's not at all confusing in a story about 12 teens, right? All I remember about this part is that Sam is the "wild one" of the girls, and one of the OTHER girls got pregnant, and maybe the fight was about Sam and Pete being more careful? All I know for sure is that Ash and Rob are so saccharinely good, I get a cavity now reading about them and their high horses. 30 pages later, Sam and Pete elope for reasons that I'm sure involved a plot on Days of Our Lives. 80 pages later, Ash drops this gem on her bf:
~~
"Rock and Roll."
"What?"
Ash laughed over the corniness of its meaning. Realizing she had finally found the right way to tell him, a light-hearted way, she began to explain.
"Rock and Roll! To put it bluntly, until I get a rock on my finger, we don't roll in the hay!"
~~
My 38 year old self mocks you, Ashley/Mary Sue! And then when Rob proposes, at the after-graduation pool party, by dropping the ring to the bottom of the pool for her to find... *sigh* Romance gold, I tell ya'! By the 3rd notebook, I'd moved up to College Ruled, Joe OD'd, there were so many characters we needed to jump from scene to scene to move them all along, and basically, each person filled a very specific stereotype, OFTEN STATED OUTRIGHT. Oh, me! I wrote openly at high school, so much so that I was asked at my 20th reunion this summer what ever happened to my "novel". I can't find the rest right now, but suffice it to say, even the rewrite during college was not salvageable.
Pg. 28 of the rewrite:
By this point, I had added narrative to at least point out who was speaking!
I found this unrelated start that went nowhere and wanted to share my attempt at arch:
~~
Sometimes, I wish I'd never met Bill. Other times, I just wish I could have a peanut butter and banana sandwich. It was hot that night, like it often is when it's summer and you live between the Arctic Circle and the Equator. When Bill called, I was watching MASH reruns and wondering why Klinger kept wearing the dresses even when they didn't get him discharged. I suppose I should be grateful that Bill interrupted my revelry, but I couldn't help but feel disgusted upon seeing him. It was, after all, the episode where Hawkeye and Hot Lips share a tender moment.
~~
I wrote a scifi/romance piece called Command Decisions in 1992 that would have been set in the Star Trek universe if my college creative writing professor allowed it to be (I later wrote a joyfully Mary Sue crossover where the characters from Command Decisions end up stranded in the Delta Quadrant and prove to Janeway she can have LOVE!- Command's Price). All I did was change the names of things, though, so I win, Professor! It was oddly prophetic of my later obsession with Janeway- I was hung up on the need for a woman in command to have to give something up to be good at her job, 3 years before Voyager even aired. And then, I had an outlet for the "Love weakens me/No, it doesn't" dreck that churned within me, and a captive audience on the AOL message boards.
The remaining notebooks jump to college and after, fragments of the second novel, fanfic after fanfic about Janeway and Chakotay (Voyager was my first online fandom back in 1997 or so), eventually bleeding into BSG stories. There are journal entries that are written vaguely like fiction (no names), in case they were found by my sisters (I moved out, finally, at 26). There are horribly depressing pieces where I tried to process things through the guise of other people.
The second novel may still get the rewrite IT deserves. I see now, from the distance of lo these many years, that I was too in love with the fantasy life of the main character and avoided the RL arc that it was purportedly about. TBH, I may one day go back to just write the fantasy storyline as its own thing, although the whole doctor/soldier/spy/EVERYTHING AWESOME female lead is only remotely believable as a figment of a young girl's imagination. She kicked ass though. She flew planes, raced cars, had all the cool spy gadgets, tragic accident after tragic accident (I mean, the horse spooking on the trail and falling and crushing her leg? Frak you, nature!).
Anyway, the rest of my stuff is either here or at my Dreamwidth or I've been too lazy to crosspost in my own journals... I feel pretty good about the last couple of years' work now... :)
The first thing I remember writing for myself (ie. not for an assignment) was a novel, entitled "The Best Years of Our Lives?" I was adorably cynical for a naive 14 year old. That first attempt was started on an electric typewriter. It was a daisy-wheel and the lag that often accompanied typing was mind-numbing. I can't find any of those very first pages, but suffice it to say that the first 200 pages were later rewritten ("tightened up") to about 35 pages. Here's page 63 of the first pass!
I'm no longer sure who is in this scene! Note the stunning lack of anyone said or narrative. I hated writing "Ash said", so I would just have the person before say the name of the next person. That's not at all confusing in a story about 12 teens, right? All I remember about this part is that Sam is the "wild one" of the girls, and one of the OTHER girls got pregnant, and maybe the fight was about Sam and Pete being more careful? All I know for sure is that Ash and Rob are so saccharinely good, I get a cavity now reading about them and their high horses. 30 pages later, Sam and Pete elope for reasons that I'm sure involved a plot on Days of Our Lives. 80 pages later, Ash drops this gem on her bf:
~~
"Rock and Roll."
"What?"
Ash laughed over the corniness of its meaning. Realizing she had finally found the right way to tell him, a light-hearted way, she began to explain.
"Rock and Roll! To put it bluntly, until I get a rock on my finger, we don't roll in the hay!"
~~
My 38 year old self mocks you, Ashley/Mary Sue! And then when Rob proposes, at the after-graduation pool party, by dropping the ring to the bottom of the pool for her to find... *sigh* Romance gold, I tell ya'! By the 3rd notebook, I'd moved up to College Ruled, Joe OD'd, there were so many characters we needed to jump from scene to scene to move them all along, and basically, each person filled a very specific stereotype, OFTEN STATED OUTRIGHT. Oh, me! I wrote openly at high school, so much so that I was asked at my 20th reunion this summer what ever happened to my "novel". I can't find the rest right now, but suffice it to say, even the rewrite during college was not salvageable.
Pg. 28 of the rewrite:
By this point, I had added narrative to at least point out who was speaking!
I found this unrelated start that went nowhere and wanted to share my attempt at arch:
~~
Sometimes, I wish I'd never met Bill. Other times, I just wish I could have a peanut butter and banana sandwich. It was hot that night, like it often is when it's summer and you live between the Arctic Circle and the Equator. When Bill called, I was watching MASH reruns and wondering why Klinger kept wearing the dresses even when they didn't get him discharged. I suppose I should be grateful that Bill interrupted my revelry, but I couldn't help but feel disgusted upon seeing him. It was, after all, the episode where Hawkeye and Hot Lips share a tender moment.
~~
I wrote a scifi/romance piece called Command Decisions in 1992 that would have been set in the Star Trek universe if my college creative writing professor allowed it to be (I later wrote a joyfully Mary Sue crossover where the characters from Command Decisions end up stranded in the Delta Quadrant and prove to Janeway she can have LOVE!- Command's Price). All I did was change the names of things, though, so I win, Professor! It was oddly prophetic of my later obsession with Janeway- I was hung up on the need for a woman in command to have to give something up to be good at her job, 3 years before Voyager even aired. And then, I had an outlet for the "Love weakens me/No, it doesn't" dreck that churned within me, and a captive audience on the AOL message boards.
The remaining notebooks jump to college and after, fragments of the second novel, fanfic after fanfic about Janeway and Chakotay (Voyager was my first online fandom back in 1997 or so), eventually bleeding into BSG stories. There are journal entries that are written vaguely like fiction (no names), in case they were found by my sisters (I moved out, finally, at 26). There are horribly depressing pieces where I tried to process things through the guise of other people.
The second novel may still get the rewrite IT deserves. I see now, from the distance of lo these many years, that I was too in love with the fantasy life of the main character and avoided the RL arc that it was purportedly about. TBH, I may one day go back to just write the fantasy storyline as its own thing, although the whole doctor/soldier/spy/EVERYTHING AWESOME female lead is only remotely believable as a figment of a young girl's imagination. She kicked ass though. She flew planes, raced cars, had all the cool spy gadgets, tragic accident after tragic accident (I mean, the horse spooking on the trail and falling and crushing her leg? Frak you, nature!).
Anyway, the rest of my stuff is either here or at my Dreamwidth or I've been too lazy to crosspost in my own journals... I feel pretty good about the last couple of years' work now... :)