I am fortunate enough as a writer that I started writing my stories with paper and pen. This is also unfortuate, because a lot of my works from my formative years in the early 2000’s (excuse me as I age myself) are all in a storage bin somewhere. Because of this, I still can’t find the original first novel I wrote and finished at 14. I’m hoping it’s somewhere in storage, somewhere safe, but we shall see.
I should say all the works were in storage or in a bin somewhere. Over the last few months I have scanned them in for safekeeping. A lot of those ideas are still good, or didn’t get the time they deserved back then because I got bored and started something else. Well, now they’re getting the time they deserve.
As of this month, I’ve begun to type up the works in an attempt to return to them later and either finish or repurpose them.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far in the first few weeks.
I’ve advanced a lot in the last decade of writing
I am so thankful for this! This year marks 20 years of writing (and more than half my life). The first few attempts were quite rough, with a lot of over explaining, a lot of characters staring at each other and long paragraphs of purple prose. I’m not perfect in my writing now, but I am glad I’ve made strides to correct some of my previous mistakes and improve upon my craft.
Some of the names are so cringe
While I don’t have the original of the first novel I ever wrote, I remember the names were so cringe. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to name my main character, so her name kept changing the more people she interacted with. Historical fiction with names like AnnaLiegh and a multitude of other terrible spellings of “old fashioned sounding” names.
In a piece I wrote around 2007/2008, the names aren’t terrible, but spelled so bad. Caylob (who while typing up I kept typing as Cayblob) and Fevar and Braxley. This novel, in my prime teenage years was a great example of why I should not have been naming real life people back then or even thinking about having any kind of responsibility for naming anything, even a puppet or two.
The ideas are spectacular, the execution not so much
When I was a teenager, I had a lot of great ideas, but not a lot of idea how to finish them. A lot of my projects had really strong beginnings, even if the word structure of the sentences were a little cringe. I typed up a chapter of a work recently and my goodness there was so much staring, no page breaks, and each movement was described in too much detail. “Her eyes watched his eyes as she blinked and smiled” kind of thing. So much cringe, but at least now that I’m putting it into a digital form, that means I can edit it all later and avoid the awkward of both characters staring at each other for long periods of time.
There has been so much creativity living in these forgotten pages and I am so excited to explore a few of those old ideas, finish them, and see what happens next now that I have grown as a writer.
It’s really nice looking back and seeing how much I’ve improved
A lot of these works, as I mentioned, are from the early 2000’s circa 2005-2010ish. There’s a lot of growth within the works between the years. Lately, I’ve been down on my current writing because I’m in the middle of everything, throwing a pity party that my writing is stale, blah blah blah. Thankfully, looking back at where I started has helped me see that I have come a long way in the last 15+ years.
I can’t wait to see where I’ll be in the next 15 years as I keep moving forward and making improvements in my craft and my writing.
