I wanted to be a writer since the 4th grade. It was one of those exercises where the teacher hands out laminated pictures and piles them on a table. You had to take one and make a story of it. Since I was at the bottom of the popular-and-attractive kid pile, by the time I got to the table, all the cool pictures had been taken.
I ended up with an old Reader’s Digest cover of a boy and a girl flying a kite, a red kite, as I recall. In another part of the drawing was a dense, green forest, in which there lumbered a bear. He stood on his hind legs and seemed to be watching the boy and the girl. (I’m still looking for that cover, even to this day.)
My story was a page turner of exactly two pages, and was written on both sides of a single sheet of wide-ruled paper. I want to say that the paper was pink or orange, as colored paper for school assignments was all the rage back then. But I know the story was simple: the boy and girl fly the kite. The wind takes the kite and flings it into the forest. The boy and girl go after the kite. They find it easily enough, but the bear comes and chases them and scares them out of the woods.
It was at that point in the story that I determined, at the very serious age of ten or so, that the story needed a lesson. It needed to impart a moral. Eventually I decided that the moral was that the boy and the girl decided never to go into the woods because there were scary bears there. So, lesson learned, they never did.
My 4th grade teacher was Mrs. Harr, and she very kindly gave me a good grade on my paper. Moreover she remarked that she liked the ending to my story. I’d like to think she even added a smiley face. Well, seeing as this was the first, if not the only bit of praise I ever remembered getting I was off and running. For I could easily understand that if it felt good now, it would feel even better if I wrote more. I would be noticed and loved!
I began writing scads of fiction and huge chunks of poetry, most of it sappy and lacking grace, but I was in earnest. I told everyone I was a writer, and after a time, I began getting pens and dictionary/thesaurus sets as gifts. One time, one memorable birthday, I even got a typewriter, a sleek white thing that came equipped with correction tape.
I wasn’t very good, but then, who is at that age. Still, I kept at it, writing, being interested in writing. While in Junior High, I even started to read Dickens and Chekhov, though my interest the latter was because he shared the same name as Ensign Pavel Chekhov, who was my favorite character on Star Trek. (Have you ever read Chekhov? Very dreary, I can tell you.)
Once in high school I began writing my novel. I kept writing it all through high school and college, and was desperate enough, at one point, to want to contact Anne Rice and ask her if she would finish it. I think I had written myself into a corner, and besides, she could do it so much better than I!
Eventually, manfully, I finished the novel on my own and bravely sent out query letters and sample chapters to agents all over the place. Eventually I did get one response from an agent who was actually interested, so off I hasted to send the manuscript to her through the mail. Soon thereafter, I got a “thank you, but this doesn’t suit our current needs.â€
Being brave and a little wound up by the fact that this agent wanted to look at my manuscript at all (as well as, I imagine, being a little crestfallen), I actually called the agent. I quickly told her that I wasn’t interested in talking her into taking on the manuscript. Instead, in what I imagine must have been a very tiny voice, I asked her to give me one or two things she found wrong with it. As a learning tool, you see.
After a very short pause of hesitation, this kind woman agreed to tell me what I wanted to know.
The first thing she told me was that the story was too full of plot holes, that too many things happened that had no basis in reality as was determined within the story. As you can imagine, this has stuck with me for always, and looking back and reviewing the story, I would have to agree. I had instant vampires and delayed sunrises; I had modern dialog and old-fashioned description. I had time travel with no paradoxes. And worst of all, I dragged the thing out where it was interesting to me and rushed through the parts that had me bored before I’d even begun.
The second thing she told me makes me laugh even now. Keep in mind that the story was a mere 102,000 words long. But what she said was, “This story is too long for young adult readers.†Can you believe it? I bet (or at least I like to gleefully think) that she regrets that observation, especially in these post-Harry Potter days.
Since that time I’ve written more poetry, taken lots of poetry courses, and written fiction both good and bad. I think I’m better than I was, at least, I can hope so. Only time will tell, I expect.