Virgin, No More

I made a list of things I would write about on my blog and, if I followed that list, I would be writing about popular fiction right now or, if I was a good student, would be reading The Picture of Dorian Grey or writing my script but here I am writing something completely out of plan and not to do with my University work. Not long ago I staggered across a copy of Chuck Palahniuk's Non-Fiction - belonging to one of my roommates as our books are usually littering the house. Of course I opened it and started reading about the writing life of Mr. Palahniuk and, like all great books, it made me want to write and made me think about where I started. It will be nicer to look back on where I started when I'm a published writer - assuming of course if I ever become one - but when my writer friends ask for advice or we get talking I mention when I started.


My first story was when I was in year four. My teacher, Mrs. Watkins, asked the class to write a fable. "Give it a good moral," she said, "you can even contain some pictures." Of course I did both of these things. I contained the best drawings an eight-year-old could muster and wrote a story of such depth that my mother and teacher were baffled at the result. The story was about a man whose wife is lost in the forest. He goes out to find her and comes across a man in a hood that says he will take him to his wife. The man follows but is warned by the rabbits in the forest to not follow the hooded man, he ignores the rabbit. The hooded man, however, turns out to be his wife and turns into a dragon and the man chops the dragon's head off and runs back to his home to take care of his children. And that is the end of my wonderful tale. And the moral, oh the moral of the story, is "don't go into forests alone and don't trust people dressed up." Looking back I understand why my mother and teacher laughed when they read it - I had essentially written a story about a transvestite. It wasn't my greatest story, I assure you. 

 

But that is my earliest memory of story writing and from that point I wrote other dreadful short stories - one about a boy who is made to believe there is no outside world, a camping trip gone wrong, even a 'how Harry Potter should end' story in which Snape turns out to be Harry's father.  The story that lead to my masterpiece was when I was in high school and I wrote a nine-paged story about a group of five friends who were no longer friends - why? Well many reasons and of course the story ended in guns and blood and all the other signs of a school shooter but when I finished I thought "Oh My God I have my masterpiece! I have a five piece saga right here!" So I took the short story and adapted it into a ninety-paged 'novel' - or what I now understand to be novella - and worked back and after two years I had the first two 'novels' in the series completed, another two to write and a novella to expand. And this was going to be my breakthrough. 


But then I woke up one day and looked at the story and thought: "oh dear. What Thomas have you been wasting your time with?" So I shoved it in a drawer and started my next epic project, the project that was going to get me published - the first in a six piece saga of epic proportion! A saga that would bewilder every fantasy reader out there. This, after a year and a half of work, was not the case. 


Oh I've gone through some awful stories, awful attempts at novels and awful completed stories that are the size of novels. I have to admit, one story I wrote when I was around seventeen - a story I put my heart and soul into and came out to a staggering 100, 000 words - is utter crap. Reading certain segments I can see my heart was there but my head was not. I do believe, however, you have to shovel through the shit in order to find the gold and that's what I'm doing, well, hopefully anyway. 


So that is the story of how I lost my story writing virginity. Next time I blog - which will be soon knowing me - I will try and stick to something I've jotted down. On my list I've jotted: write about popular fiction, Vampire fiction and Revolutionary Road. But who knows what will come up next.