Dusting Off the Cobwebs
Recently, my step-uncle moved out of our house in to his own apartment. This reminded me of when we moved to Oklahoma about six years ago. When you’re packing boxes, you tend to find things you forgot you even owned. I feel the same about writing.
Every now and then, I get the urge to do Spring cleaning whether it be Spring or not. I find stories or ideas I can’t believe I even wrote. Some notes don’t make sense or pieces I intended to finish but never did. During one of my cleaning binges, I found a composition notebook full of stories I wrote in the 6th grade.
Most were fairytale-like stories and were not well written. I couldn’t believe how far I had come with just the basics. I also recovered the rough draft for a “revenge” novel I wrote in high school along with a friend. I call it a “revenge” novel because it starred several fellow classmates (actual names and descriptions were never used) in vampire massacre plot.
Today, that may seem like a Columbine waiting to happen. However, it was anything but that. Most of the characters were friends not enemies. The first one was finished by rough draft standards and a sequel was in the works but never completed. I thought I had lost both during the last move. I still get a chuckle re-reading our “masterpiece”.
The moral of this post is to do a little Spring cleaning. You’d be amazed at what you’ll find.
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Write Anything 
I loved reading this today. I am on holidays in one of my home towns at the moment and have been spending quite a bit of time with one of my high school girlfriends.
I wrote my first “novel” at the age of 12 after reading my first (and only) Sweet Valley High novel – believing I could do far better. There was a dark bent of human nature in my writing even back then. That novel was resurrected two years later when I moved to Cairns – rewriting and adding about another A4 pages to it. It as written because I loved writing but even more than that, I loved writing for my friends to read. It has my friends – like yours – with different names and different scenarios etc. My world at that stage wasn’t terribly big.
I have considered taking it out – both drafts and reading them again. Maybe I will be pleasently surprised, rather than convulsed into a static cringe – considering I’ve re-read letters from that period and been amazed at the quality of my composition and language in my letters (yes it has been a rather long walk down memory lane this trip!)
I’d love to see what I could learn about myself as a writer re-reading the really old stuff. And great to know that you hadn’t thrown out your stuff Andrea. It was obviously meant to stick around with you a little longer.
Ahhh…Sweet Valley High. I remember those novels. I think the first one I ever read was The Ghost in the Bell Tower. I so loved it. Don’t remember what happened to my copy though.
I recently reconnected with the friend I spoke of in the post. Thought about asking her if she would like to help finish the sequel. I doubt she has time with all that is on her plate, but maybe it’ll turn into an ongoing project that keeps us in touch for years to come.