What was the first story you ever wrote? Did it foreshadow something about the writer you would eventually become?
24 thoughts on “What Was The First Story You Ever Wrote?”
Ha! Not at all. My first two stories were children’s stories that I wrote to get my point across to an unruly boyfriend at the time. He got the message. 🙂
Bravo!
Also bravo for the subtle trolling by implying that the recipient’s reading level was that of a child. Well done!
I assume Chef Nathan prevails in the end over the dastardly Paprika King! Thanks for visiting, Eric!
“The Horse Who Went to Heaven” – written and illustrated by me when I was about 5.
I don’t know if it foreshadowed anything besides a love of animals, writing, and drawing.
Sounds adorable, Cynthia!
Not counting school assignments, I didn’t start thinking about writing until I was in possession of a well-worn AARP card. The whole story about how I became a writer by mistake is here if anyone’s interested. https://terryodell.com/extras/how-i-became-a-writer-by-mistake/
Funny story, Terry. And I like your point about fan fiction being a helpful way to start writing, by reducing the size of the problem.
I was curious about how you became a writer because I didn’t start writing until I was 35. Until then I, too, was a reader. Love your story and this is the value of putting a link in your reply–I clicked on over and bought one of your books. 🙂
Well, THANK YOU! Patricia.
WOW. I’m impressed with the commenters’ ability to precisely remember what they first wrote! I can’t remember exactly what I wrote as a kid but I can tell you it usually involved horses and ranches. So yes, it was a foreshadowing, given that historical fiction is still my primary focus.
I’m struck by that as well, BK! I remember my first story only because I wrote it after someone handed me an advance check. I had never even thought about writing fiction before that; I had always been a nonfiction reader and writer (as a former journalist).
I didn’t write anything as a kid unless it was due the next morning. But when I was 35, these people came to live in my head and wouldn’t go away until I wrote their stories down. The first story was a short that I submitted to Woman’s World…and they bought it. I just knew I was on my way to the NYT Best Seller list.
You can pick yourself up off the floor now. 😉 It would be 33 years before my first novel was released.
But still, what an encouraging kickoff to your writing, that they bought your first short story! Thanks for sharing that, Patricia!
My first story was ‘The Journey’. It was about too homeless men traveling around the country commenting on life. It foreshadowed the years of work I would put in to become a pretty good photographer.
I didn’t come back to writing until much later. I joined a writer’s group. I wrote a bunch of short stories. I just reread one of them. It was actually pretty good. I’m editing it now as a give-a-way for joining my mail list.
two not too
It was back in my school days. A fantasy story. I was so proud of it but now whenever I remember it I cringe.
My first story–the first one I was really proud of–was actually an epic poem called The Ballad of Old Mack Cook. It starts,
I was just a child, a boy o’ ten
When I went to the mountain where I’d never been
And I heard the old folks talk and say, “There’s a monster up here, still lives today,”
With glowin’ red eyes and a deathly look.
“I’m tellin’ ya, boy, ’bout Old Mack Cook.”
That was followed by 34 additional stanzas (!).
The story taught me that 1) Poetry was not my long suit, 2) there’s no room in the literary world for 35-stanza poetry, and 3) there’s nothing like watching the eyes of young campers when you recite the story at night around the fire–and announce that Old Mack Cook lives in the very place where we were camped.
That sounds like a great one for scout camp! Poor poetry or not, I can picture some of the boys in our troop not sleeping for the night after a story like that.
First story I wrote as an adult was titled “Mary Had a Little Lamb”
It wasn’t your traditional MHALL though, as most of you probably already guessed, since … well … I wrote it. It was also my first blog series, of sorts.
It was 1990ish, I was the manager of the dining hall for the NSA. We were in the Services Squadron (folks who do the cooking, maintenance, cleaning, and laundry) for the Air Forces 694th Intelligence Wing. The mess hall ran 24/7, and there were a lot of IT issues that cropped up at oh-dark-thirty. I was not an IT guy then, but was a tech hobbiest. The network admin, a close friend of mine, hated getting wake up calls in the middle of the night, so he gave me an admin account to fix stuff instead of him, since I was paid hourly and he was an airman (salary…low salary). Once I got in to the system I quickly created an anonymous email account and started sending twice a week ‘episodes’ of Mary’s tale. Here’s what I recall of the opening lines of the first episode.
***
Mary had a little lamb
With fleece as white as snow
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.
And then they came to town. Spikes on their helmets, blades jutting from the wheels of their motorcycles, the dreaded ‘HELLS PIGEONS MOTORCYCLE CLUB’!
Mary screamed. The little lamb froze in terror. The pigeons roared past, Mary leaped but the lamb was not fast enough. The pigeon cooed their evil laugh, their leader flipping a wing at Mary, as they rode away, leaving Little Lamb a pile of minced mutton and wool fluff.
***
There were about 20 or so episodes, maybe 300-500 words each, describing Mary’s fall into drugs and prostitution, then her recovery as she realized the need for revenge and mercilessly hunted down the grey-feathered thugs. She exacted her revenge one bird at a time, no quarter given. By then end Mary was an expert assassin, and knew over fifty recipes for pigeon.
They never did find out who wrote those emails.
Poachers in Alaska shooting wildlife. Big Foot appears from the brush, smashes their rifles. They leave vowing never to return
A fifteen-hundred-page fantasy trilogy … which was awful in many ways … but which I just revised into two standalone novels set in different worlds, one of which came out from Random House last year and the other from Simon and Schuster. So I have to say, that trilogy definitely foreshadowed something about the writer I became.
I didn’t begin writing until I left the day job and retired. I published my first fiction short story, “Rain, Rain Go Away,” in 2010. I was thrilled to death. When I look back on that story now, it wasn’t the greatest, but it was the beginning of my writing self-confidence. I’m forever grateful to the editor that accepted it.
What was the first story you ever wrote? Did it foreshadow something about the writer you would eventually become?
Ha! Not at all. My first two stories were children’s stories that I wrote to get my point across to an unruly boyfriend at the time. He got the message. 🙂
Bravo!
Also bravo for the subtle trolling by implying that the recipient’s reading level was that of a child. Well done!
“Chef Nathan and Wicked King Paprika,” which grew out of a bedtime story I told my 6- and 3-year-olds when we were camping in Germany. (https://medium.com/misplaced-identities/chef-nathan-and-wicked-king-paprika-cd56ecef56e3)
Foreshadows a propensity to overwrite?
Also a concern with ethics and justice.
I assume Chef Nathan prevails in the end over the dastardly Paprika King! Thanks for visiting, Eric!
“The Horse Who Went to Heaven” – written and illustrated by me when I was about 5.
I don’t know if it foreshadowed anything besides a love of animals, writing, and drawing.
Sounds adorable, Cynthia!
Not counting school assignments, I didn’t start thinking about writing until I was in possession of a well-worn AARP card. The whole story about how I became a writer by mistake is here if anyone’s interested. https://terryodell.com/extras/how-i-became-a-writer-by-mistake/
Funny story, Terry. And I like your point about fan fiction being a helpful way to start writing, by reducing the size of the problem.
I was curious about how you became a writer because I didn’t start writing until I was 35. Until then I, too, was a reader. Love your story and this is the value of putting a link in your reply–I clicked on over and bought one of your books. 🙂
Well, THANK YOU! Patricia.
WOW. I’m impressed with the commenters’ ability to precisely remember what they first wrote! I can’t remember exactly what I wrote as a kid but I can tell you it usually involved horses and ranches. So yes, it was a foreshadowing, given that historical fiction is still my primary focus.
I’m struck by that as well, BK! I remember my first story only because I wrote it after someone handed me an advance check. I had never even thought about writing fiction before that; I had always been a nonfiction reader and writer (as a former journalist).
I didn’t write anything as a kid unless it was due the next morning. But when I was 35, these people came to live in my head and wouldn’t go away until I wrote their stories down. The first story was a short that I submitted to Woman’s World…and they bought it. I just knew I was on my way to the NYT Best Seller list.
You can pick yourself up off the floor now. 😉 It would be 33 years before my first novel was released.
But still, what an encouraging kickoff to your writing, that they bought your first short story! Thanks for sharing that, Patricia!
My first story was ‘The Journey’. It was about too homeless men traveling around the country commenting on life. It foreshadowed the years of work I would put in to become a pretty good photographer.
I didn’t come back to writing until much later. I joined a writer’s group. I wrote a bunch of short stories. I just reread one of them. It was actually pretty good. I’m editing it now as a give-a-way for joining my mail list.
two not too
It was back in my school days. A fantasy story. I was so proud of it but now whenever I remember it I cringe.
My first story–the first one I was really proud of–was actually an epic poem called The Ballad of Old Mack Cook. It starts,
I was just a child, a boy o’ ten
When I went to the mountain where I’d never been
And I heard the old folks talk and say, “There’s a monster up here, still lives today,”
With glowin’ red eyes and a deathly look.
“I’m tellin’ ya, boy, ’bout Old Mack Cook.”
That was followed by 34 additional stanzas (!).
The story taught me that 1) Poetry was not my long suit, 2) there’s no room in the literary world for 35-stanza poetry, and 3) there’s nothing like watching the eyes of young campers when you recite the story at night around the fire–and announce that Old Mack Cook lives in the very place where we were camped.
That sounds like a great one for scout camp! Poor poetry or not, I can picture some of the boys in our troop not sleeping for the night after a story like that.
First story I wrote as an adult was titled “Mary Had a Little Lamb”
It wasn’t your traditional MHALL though, as most of you probably already guessed, since … well … I wrote it. It was also my first blog series, of sorts.
It was 1990ish, I was the manager of the dining hall for the NSA. We were in the Services Squadron (folks who do the cooking, maintenance, cleaning, and laundry) for the Air Forces 694th Intelligence Wing. The mess hall ran 24/7, and there were a lot of IT issues that cropped up at oh-dark-thirty. I was not an IT guy then, but was a tech hobbiest. The network admin, a close friend of mine, hated getting wake up calls in the middle of the night, so he gave me an admin account to fix stuff instead of him, since I was paid hourly and he was an airman (salary…low salary). Once I got in to the system I quickly created an anonymous email account and started sending twice a week ‘episodes’ of Mary’s tale. Here’s what I recall of the opening lines of the first episode.
***
Mary had a little lamb
With fleece as white as snow
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.
And then they came to town. Spikes on their helmets, blades jutting from the wheels of their motorcycles, the dreaded ‘HELLS PIGEONS MOTORCYCLE CLUB’!
Mary screamed. The little lamb froze in terror. The pigeons roared past, Mary leaped but the lamb was not fast enough. The pigeon cooed their evil laugh, their leader flipping a wing at Mary, as they rode away, leaving Little Lamb a pile of minced mutton and wool fluff.
***
There were about 20 or so episodes, maybe 300-500 words each, describing Mary’s fall into drugs and prostitution, then her recovery as she realized the need for revenge and mercilessly hunted down the grey-feathered thugs. She exacted her revenge one bird at a time, no quarter given. By then end Mary was an expert assassin, and knew over fifty recipes for pigeon.
They never did find out who wrote those emails.
Poachers in Alaska shooting wildlife. Big Foot appears from the brush, smashes their rifles. They leave vowing never to return
A fifteen-hundred-page fantasy trilogy … which was awful in many ways … but which I just revised into two standalone novels set in different worlds, one of which came out from Random House last year and the other from Simon and Schuster. So I have to say, that trilogy definitely foreshadowed something about the writer I became.
I didn’t begin writing until I left the day job and retired. I published my first fiction short story, “Rain, Rain Go Away,” in 2010. I was thrilled to death. When I look back on that story now, it wasn’t the greatest, but it was the beginning of my writing self-confidence. I’m forever grateful to the editor that accepted it.