Today is Monday and I was merely going to come up with the questions for the Sunshine Blogger tag and tag people, but I found something else to do instead. I saw this on Amanda's blog, and decided it would be insane fun to do, so here I am!
*shouts across the blogsphere to Abbiee* Thanks for creating this tag and tagging me! <3
Rules:
Thank the person who tagged you.
Copy/paste and answer these questions:
- What horrendous book did you write as a child?
- What did you learn from it?
Talk about as many books/writing projects as you like!
Tag 5 other bloggers
My Horrendous Early Writings
Since I can do as many I please, I will do as many as possible. The thing is, I never actually wrote anything very long, so these are mostly short story length. A warning in advance: as a young writer, I had zero understanding of "plot". So my stories were basically pointless and went absolutely nowhere. They just chronicled the daily life and the characters learned nothing and did nothing. Also I was very good at copying interesting scenes from other books xD Here we go now:
1. The Rabbit Story
This I wrote when I was eight, I think and it was maybe a hundred words, I don't know I have to check. And it went like this...
- Mother Bunny want to take her two babies out to the store ("Decoration Shop") for the first time
- Boy whose name is *goes to check* Roger (maybe I was copying Max and Ruby here, who knows?) is insanely excited, but
- Girl whose name is Rita is scared, so
- Mother calls for her sister, Betty Bunson, to babysit Rita, while
- She and Roger go out and then
- Return and tell Rita all about it!
What I Learned...
- It's lot of fun to illustrate your story,
- There's an amazing sense of accomplishment at the end,
- Others will be impressed and proud of you.
-You treasure the first things you wrote, but
- You realize they are terrible, and
- That they had no plot at all, and
- You were horrible at naming things (Bunson, really? Decoration Shop?)
2. Cute Cats
*cringes at the title* This was about the same length as "The Rabbit Story" and written on the same day. It begins, "There was a little girl who lived in a little house in a little town." The gist of it is,
- The girl, Flora, has two cats named Corel and Purel (*coughcough*) and
- She is going to take them to the park with her friend, Elizabeth, and her two cats, Treenja and T-- (I don't remember this and the name is illegible now) but
- Purel is lost, and
- Flora looks for her until
- Her sister, Ella, finds Purel outside in the tree.
What I Learned...
- I loved naming everyone in the story,
- My names were ridiculous,
- I liked animals,
- Lost things should remain lost for longer than two minutes before they are found, also
- Others are better at finding your lost items than you are.
3. The Bird Story
This one I wrote in a sketchbook which I illustrated while I went along and it was my pride and joy and I loved it with everything in me at the time. I was nine, I think, and at the time the huge yard that we had was basically bird paradise every spring, and so bird-watching, bird-studying, bird-drawing, and bird-writing was the main past time (even bird-playing).
This story has
- brother and sister ducks named Don and Dina who
- write letters, and
- talk about writing, and
- play with their friends, and
- go on vacation to Water Bird Park, and
- make new friends,
- whom they write to when they return home.
So basically this was about birds and writing :P
What I Learned...
- I was obsessed with letter writing, and
- I loved brids, and
- I loved naming siblings with names that began with the same letters, and
- I knew my bird species well, and
- Stories are best written during summer holidays when you're free from school.
4. Picnic at Pineville Edge
I don't have this anymore so I don't remember all the details. I wrote it one very rainy day at my desk about horses and a picnic and breaks from rainy days. It went something like...
- It's been raining all week, so when it finally clears up,
- two girls decide to go picnicking so they call their two friends, and
- after packing the food they ride their horses to the field of the edge of town, where
- they eat and have fun and then
- return home.
Hahaha. You can see why I destroyed it later.
What I Learned...
- Rainy days are good writing days,
- Don't write about stuff you don't know about, i.e. horses
- A lot of times you write about what you wish was taking place.
5. The Lost Cattail (or something like that)
In this story there's a cat named Catilog who collects cattails from the biggest to smallest until the tiniest one goes missing so she decided to investigate. This was a four-page handwritten story when I was about ten, maybe. Eventually the cat finds that it was a bird who took it for building her nest.
What I Learned...
- Mysteries are fun to write,
- It's fun to surprise others with stories you've written and get them to read them out loud,
- Sometimes your stories make no sense looking back because how can Catilog tell one cattail apart form another?
6. Alinan Uusi Kaveri
Bet you didn't understand a word of that. I wrote this five chapter tale in Finn for a friend and translated it says, "Alina's New Friend". In this story a duck named Alina makes friends with a girl named Jannika at school and they become friends and have a lot of fun. Alina is a bit brash and Jannika has a decisiveness problem and they have an argument about the stupidest thing but finally make up in time to agree on a present for their friend's party.
What I Learned...
- I can survive writing something more than a few pages,
- It's nice to write for people outside your family even if
- they don't always acknowledge it, and
- ducks are fun to write about, also
- friends may fight but they always make up, and
- there can't be a good story without a penpal making an appearance (because I featured at least two letters in here that had zero to do with the main plot - not that there was any)
7. Saber
By far one of my longest works, Saber was a 100-pager (so the pages were half size of the usual... what?) and inspired by prehistoric animals and Bambi. Haha. I wrote it at 11. Now I'm told it's the stupidest thing ever. (I have harsh critiques around here.) Basically it went like this
- Saber, a saber-toothed tiger, is born and
- he grows and learns about the world
- and makes friends with a girl named Oda (I still like this name :D)
- and meets a naughty boy who happens to be a cousin of his
- and he learns about hunting
- but he's strangely averse to killing his prey?
- and in the winter he meets his father, and
- and they migrate, and
- when he's grown up he discovers feelings and
- fights the now-grown-up naughty-boy-saber-tooth for the girl :P
- and then sometime later he's an unbearably smart and wise grown up and
- Oda has cubs to take care of.
What I Learned...
- copying sure teaches you but
- in the future you will feel incredibly embarassed over how much you stole from others, and finally
- animals should act like their kind, predators like predators and prey like prey.
8. An Empty Pantry
I wrote this short historical fiction story for school in grade 6 and it's about two female missionaries in China with the CIM in the 1800s and there is a bad famine and they are trusting God to provide.
What I Learned...
- hi-fi is very satisfying to write,
- plotting helps immensely,
- it is a good idea to write what you know about and
- themes make a story more fulfilling.
And that's that! What do you think about my stories? What terrible early writings do you have?
Now for tagging:
Katie Grace @ a writer's faith
Jonathan @ fishing for ideas
Abi @ the left-handed typist
Christine @ musings of an elf
Eve @ eve of night
All of you should enjoy this and I will be keeping an eye on your blogs so I can read all about your early writings! (Of course, if you don't want to share them... *sigh* be brave, guys! It's actually a lot of fun!)
This was a rather long post! Hope you liked it and if you feel like doing this tagged even though you weren't tagged by me, feel free to steal it. And anyway, Abbiee did tag everyone who read her post!
xxxx lisa
Haha, this was so hilarious to read and thank you for tagging me! I already have two tags to do *cries* But I love tags and whenever I get the time I'll definitely do it!
ReplyDeleteAwesome post Lisa!
Thanks Anna! I admit it was so much fun to go back and see what I'd created! I can't wait to see your answers when you get around to it!
DeleteI'm a bit behind with writing posts, but those are great questions and I look forward to answering them! Thanks, Lisa! :)
ReplyDeleteWelks, Jem! Hope you have fun!
DeleteWow, you had a lot of early writing. My tag like this is coming up Wednesday. It was fun to do, except I didn't have a lot. I wasn't much of a writer until my teen years. This was fun to read.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I loved Max and Ruby as a kid. Oh, and rainy days are the best writing days. :)
iviewrites.blogspot.com
Ooh thanks. Will look out for your tag :D
DeleteHaha Max and Ruby - yes I liked it too when I was little, even though looking back it's a little silly xD
Will check out your blog!
Oh thank you!
DeleteYes, the cartoon is silly now, but it was entertaining to me as a kid. :p
YOU DID THE TAG!! EEEP OMG THIS IS WAS SO MUCH FUN TO READ I LOVED IT! xD All of your stories sound so much like the ones I wrote when I was younger!! I loved illustrating picture books and had a whole series (that I didn't even talk about in my tag lol) about a dachshund named Prince Browncloud <<< AND I WROTE SO MANY OF THEM. wow. those were the days. :')
ReplyDeleteTHANK YOU FOR DOING THIS TAG I LOVE ITTTT <3333
rock on,
abbiee
Haha yes! Awesome tag you created, you know!? I might do a variation sometime called "the unfinished works of lisa" but anyway! Prince Browncloud? that sounds sooo cute! <3 <3
DeleteYes well thanks for coming up with the tag - you're so welcome I loved doing it!
Ahhhhh -- you totally sound like me!! LOL. I was always terrible with plot, and I never even finished anything I started until a few years ago when I really got into writing. I'm still no good at plotting, buuut *sighs* at least I try.
ReplyDeleteWasn't it a lot easier when our younger selves could just write and write without giving any thought to making it "good" (since they were always awesome, no matter what)? XD
Aww, the Rabbit Story is so cute. <3 I actually have a stuffed bean bag bunny that I named Rita. I love all those!! Our old writings are always crap, or we think they are at least, but you demonstrate perfectly here how they're all learning experiences. Also, I would love to illustrate my writings. How fun would that be. Too bad I can't draw to save my life.
Thanks so much for tagging me, Lisa! :) I'll try to get it finished and out ASAP!
Eve
Edge of Night
That's fun Lol These were all done before I learned about beginnings, middles, and ends xD Or of conflicts and resolutions.
DeleteYES totally our younger selves were a lot less critical... though I do remember rewriting the first chapter of Saber five or six times until I was satisfied with it xD
True they were pretty sweet! Aww illustrating is so much fun! I plan my characters personalities and backstories best when I am trying to capture their faces on paper :)
Looking forward to see you answers!
Hey! So sorry it took a while, but I finally got this post out. Here's the link for ya! Thanks again for the tag, it was great fun. <3
DeleteThe link totally didn't work lol. Let me try again: Post link
Delete(And in case that also didn't work, https://eveofnight.blogspot.com/2017/08/early-writings-tag.html)
Your stories were hilarious! XD I remember that my very first stories were just as bad, or worse. And when you're a kid, you don't really think about copying other stories/plotlines. You just write whatever the heck you want to.
ReplyDeleteIf you HAD to pick one of these stories to rewrite today, which would you choose? :P
Thanks for tagging me! This'll be my first ever tag, so yay for me! XD
Thank you - yes it's funny looking back on them! Exactly! xD And guess what? It's not a bad thing to copy when you're learning! A writer once said to learn from the masters and not to worry if you copied them at first because it's the way you always learn ... :D
DeleteUh... let's see... I suppose I'd choose to rewrite Saber, because it is the longest and it would give me a better story to work with :P But An Empty Pantry would be good too. That was the most sensible one - because it was for school xD xD
You're welcome - hope you have fun!
You're welcome! Nope, it isn't. I've never heard of that before--who said it? Plus, there's nothing new under the sun, so you're not going to be able to write something that's 100% original.
DeleteWell, either one would be interesting to see as a rewritten project. XD
I will! :)
I'm not sure who said it? I'm thinking it may have been in a book by Susan Tiberghien, but idk... I'm sure it's been said by more than one person :)
Delete(I had fun reading your answers :D)
Oh my goodness, this is so great! I LOVE IT. It's so fun looking back at old stories. Also terrifying and cringe-worthy...but fun! :D
ReplyDeleteI love how most of yours centered around animals. Sounds like me. I was so animal obsessed when I was little. And I soooo get the being obsessed with names thing. I'm still that way! Seriously, I get totally obsessed with names. Speaking of names, Catilog is kind of the greatest name for a cat. Too great! XD
"A lot of times you write about what you wish was taking place." <---SO TRUE THOUGH. I did that a lot when I was younger. Now I write about stuff I reeeally don't want to actual happen. You know, like torture scenes and stuff. *cough*
ANYWAYS. I absolutely loved reading this! Thank you soooo much for tagging me. I really should try to do it sometime!
YES you are right! Thank you also!
DeleteAhahaha I actually didn't realize until I wrote this how many animals I did? I think I did animals because I really didn't have all the experience and knowledge to write about people because I was a stay-at-home girl who played with animal toys xD Oooh thanks, I was pretty proud of that name at the time!
Haha yes I know! Though maybe you wouldn't mind being the epic hero? xD
Yes no problem you are welcome! Can't wait to hear about your stories xD