The Early Writing Tag

Jules tagged me for the Early Writing Tag. LOL, as if I could narrow down my poor writing to ONE THING! Ha! But anyway, I have to answer two questions, then tag five people (as if there is a person left who hasn't already done this one). Here goes!

~What horrendous books did you write as a child?~

All of them. All of them were horrendous. Back when I first started dabbling in this writing adventure, I wrote horse stories with Jules. We made ourselves the main characters and had this whole world/farm thingy where each of us had different horse lands with our special horses.  The horses could talk.*eyeroll* Oh, and we lived in a three-story house with a laundry shoot (which we may or may not have gotten stuck in). Anyway, we would sometimes write stories together and sometimes we would write individual stories about our particular lands. All of them were pretty silly. I even wrote a mystery, of which I was so proud. I also messed around with playwriting, which didn't work out so well. But I tried.

Some of my old writing notebooks. 

I had a cat one, of course

~What did you learn from them?~

1. Be proud of your work, especially if it's not great. I wrote fearlessly back then. That is a trait that I'm fighting hard to get back to. I tried hard things. I wanted to stretch myself. Remember that mystery I mentioned? The one I was so proud of? Well, I'm still proud of it. Not because it was great, but because it represented a deeper part of me. The part that wanted to try everything. The part that believed with her whole heart and wasn't afraid of falling. I might try my hand at a mystery again because I'm inspired by younger me. She was a brave girl. I want to see her in me again. 

2. Be proud enough of your work to do it again. Revisions are a reality. You don't just write something once and think it's okay. You have to redo it again and again and again.

3. Don't look back on your old writing in disgust. It got you to where you are today. It doesn't deserve the horrified, disgusted looks that you give it. It deserves thanks because, without it, you wouldn't be a writer, much less the writer you are today. And we don't want that.

4. Just because something is awful at face value, doesn't mean it won't inspire something greater. All of my failed attempts at playwriting led to a first novel.

5. It's okay to laugh at it. No, it's not okay to look at it in disgust, but you can laugh at it. Find the humor of the situation. Some of your old writing may be hilarious. It might be silly. You might find you're really thankful you don't write that way anymore. So go ahead: laugh at it. It's pretty funny.

On that note: can we just appreciate my fantastic art skills?

So there you have it. Those are my answers. Now seeing as pretty much everyone in the entire blogworld has already done this tag, I'm going to leave this one open.

What about y'all? What was your early writing like? Do you get a kick out of it like I do? What sort of advice do you have for those who are struggling to get past the early writing phase?