Beginnings

I was thinking the other day about how long it’s been since I started writing and, judging by the first draft of the first novel I started working on – on a Third Generation iPod Touch might I add! – it was about eleven years ago at the tender age of ten. I had lists of novel ideas that I wanted to write, even fairly lengthy plots that, whilst I’m not sure make much sense now, I am actually quite impressed that I was able to do that aged ten.

New writers often don’t have the luxury of chalking their early shortcomings – if they have any, some don’t but most do, definitely including me – to being a child. It can be disheartening and difficult to find confidence when your first drafts and ideas might, in time, seem awful to you or stop making sense. However, I encourage every new writer to stick at it, even if you have never written a single thing before and think everything you have written is terrible (which does not necessarily go away as you keep writing, but it was definitely worst for me when I was new to it) as you will improve in skill, self-editing and in judging what actually doesn’t work and what is just you being self-critical, although those things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

One of things that I found among my old notes was a piece of prose – not sure where in the ‘novel’ it would have come now, but I have some vague recollection that it came in the middle of some sort of fantasy plot with a religious element. I thought I would share it here so that any new writers can see – when I can hopefully share a new piece from recently soon – that it is definitely possible to improve your writing through practice and persistence.

Now, I won’t say that this piece is necessarily bad, it’s just over-described and you can definitely tell that I’m ten and lacking in experience when writing this. Enjoy:

‘The sky was darker than it had ever been. Night descended upon St Mary’s Terrace, swift as a lioness making a kill. The scene was idyllic. Stars twinkled in there – oops! – place in the vast expanse of space. The moon burned the night sky no less bright, though perhaps softer, than the sun, her sister. Candles were out all throughout the quiet, suburban street, no carts, no horses, no people. Nothing.

Helen Honner-White pulled shut her blinds and smiled an absent, peaceful grin. Her self-absorbed mother-in-law had been wrong. At last!

It’d been months since they’d heard anything but sigh of relief on the subject of … She was gone. Her world. Which, until mere weeks ago, Hellen had been sure was the only world, was safe again. She could, at last, sleep in peace again at night, without fear of fire, of enslavement, of death.

However, outside her cosy cottage of 73 St Mary’s Terrace, where her husband, Sir Robert Honner-White, slept deeply in their bed just above her head, something far more sinister than night descended upon the neighbourly street and the grand houses that lined it.

Dated 25 July 2010 as the date last edited.

Now, I am not sure what is happening in this piece and I have left in every spelling, grammar and factual mistake that was in the original. There is also clearly something missing in the middle – I have no idea what subject there had been a sigh of relief over – but I think the message is clear. I had a plot in mind and, even now, I think I can say something good about this. Even in what is objectively the worst thing I have written – at least the worst thing I still have a record of, I remember an accidental piece of Fifi and the Flowertots fanfiction I wrote aged six that probably wins that prize – I can see my passion for writing.

So, if you enjoy writing and want to pursue it, say the words Fifi Fanfiction or keep ‘sigh of relief on the subject of … She was gone‘ in your mind whenever you doubt yourself. I’m now pursuing a degree in creative writing and I’m halfway (almost) through my first novel, but I started out writing snippets of what, on a third read, might well be aliens invading 17th century England, on an iPod 3. Keep going and have faith in your ability!