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Why I want to be a writer
The first creative piece I ever wrote on my own was no doubt inspired by Hallmark Greeting Cards and poems by Emily Dickenson, a piece called, "Flowers", with a backwards e.
My second creative writing venture was about a girl wanting to buy ice-skates. She was Victorian and wealthy, and her parents would buy her anything. They go to a toy shop run by a poor old doll-maker. The main character is distracted by the doll-maker and the dolls. She had thought she had outgrown dolls, but so enchanted is she, she buys a doll even though she really wanted those ice-skates. Then she befriends the doll-maker, who was from Ireland and had had a daughter who would have been the main character's age, had she lived. The daughter's name was Katie, and periodic visions of her disturb the doll-maker. I was never sure what happened next. I think our main character tries to help the doll-maker, financially and emotionally. Her parents are disturbed by her relationship with him and there was probably going to be a lot of arguing; of course, I never finished it.
I . . . don't know why I told my whole story, other than that I might possibly still be invested in it. I was in second grade; I wrote twenty pages of it by hand. The point of the story is that it was a rip off of Meet Samantha, of American Girls dolls fame. Not that there are ice-skates and dolls in those stories, but concerns about class distinction were. I was very interested in that, in rich people not only helping the poor but befriending them, and seeing that they are people too. Moreover sometimes seeing that they can be better people than the rich. I was very compelled; I identified; I wished to visit soup kitchens, just not real ones.
Anyway, everything I wrote in those days was firmly grounded in something else. I could usually tell you what. The same is true now. One of my favorite original things I've ever written happened because I was pre-occupied with movieverse Wolverine/Rogue, though hopefully you'd never know. It wasn't such a big leap to start writing fanfiction. I wrote twenty pages of a novel inspired by Samantha in second grade; I wrote forty pages of a new end/sequel to Catherine Marshall's Christy in third.
I was prolific. It made me better, I think, because it was practice. Also because I thought a lot about it. The draft for the Christy sequel contains a note that reads something like,
"Dear Joy,
You need to work on sounding like Catherine Marshall. Note these writing quirks of Marshall's: how she uses an action to indicate whose dialogue it is, not always saying, 'said'. You should use this too, and then this sequel will fit more seamlessly into the novel. Otherwise, keep up the good work!
Love, Joy."
I am serious; I was worried about matching the author's tone. Sometimes I think I must have been very percocious; after all this was third grade. Mostly I think I was neurotic. That must be it, because I still am.
Here comes my favorite story about the writing of my youth. I was fannish, even then, though I had no one to share obsessions with and did not always produce as much related material (fic, meta) regarding things I was fannish about. But I was obviously obsessed with Samantha and with Christy, and many other things, most notably Anne of Green Gables, Gone With the Wind, The Little Princess, Sound of Music, and a little known book called They Loved To Laugh. But for a stretch of time, about the stretch of time most my obsessions take, I was obsessed with a book called Doll In The Garden.
It was about a girl named Ashley (the book had me from there; I used to love that name. Who know why; now I find it insipid. Sorry, Ashleys!) who moves to a new place with a mean landlady. The garden is a wreck and mysterious, with undertones of The Secret Garden, only I never got to be such a fan of that one, for some reason. Anyway, eventually there is a doll, and a ghost of a girl who died of TB, and a cat who does not cast a shadow. I thought it was so cool, that Ashley would notice that the cat did not cast a shadow. I also thought TB was incredibly romantic, because I didn't know it was called TB; I just knew people wasted away. They were very pale, and coughed up blood on lacy hankies, and it only happened Back In The Day, when everyone was pale and had lacy hankies. The ghost in this book did it all the time. It was just so beautiful, like the Chinese flag, you know, or a poppy in the snow.
The ghost is the ghost of a girl who was friends with the mean landlady when they both were young, or something. And finding out about her helps Ashley improve her relationship with the landlady and with her mother. Of course there are some family issues because her mom just got a divorce, or her dad died, or something like that, and that's why they've just moved. It all gets resolved in the end and the ghost gets put to rest. It was not a very good book, and I think I realized that even at the time. I just loved the idea of the garden, and the doll, and the old-fashioned ghost. I do not like ghosts very much, but I liked this one, because she wasn't very spooky or floaty. She was just a girl who only appeared at night, who befriended Ashely. They played with the doll, I think, and Ashley was wooed a bit, as she had thought she was too old for dolls (obviously, I loved this theme. Stolen from The Little Princess).
Anyway, this book inspired me of course to write about a girl finding a secret garden and befriending someone there who is tragic and doomed, and also probably very poor, because of my whole pretend-soup-kitchen thing. (Just so we're clear, this bum would have had very fine clothing, but very well-used, perhaps dusty, and last century. She would have fallen on hard times, not been born into poverty. Although being born into poverty was fine by me, seeing as how none of it was real). I wished to write about this lass. I wished to make her ethereal. I wished to make her eyes large and blue and beseeching in her china face, and her lashes caught with summer sunlight. I wished to make her clothing whisper, instead of rustle, the sheer-worn-tattered lace of her petticoats shhing against each other like the wings of moths. Her hands would have been white spiders, and no doubt she would have coughed blood, and her hand kerchief would have been just like a cardinal on a cloud. I wished to make her exactly like the book cover, which was one of the most arresting pictures of my youth. (I don't find it sad I was so overcome by such crappy art. Rather I find it charming. Conceitedly, I'm quite won over by my younger self.)
That's what I was going for, anyway, in my description of the Mystery Girl In The Garden. What I wrote was, "She was reallly, really pretty. And her skin was peach. I mean, peach." I wrote the second "peach" slanty so you could tell I really meant it. Really.
That's really as far as I got. I was so upset. I knew "peach I mean peach" was not what I wanted to say. I wanted her skin to be pale, almost translucent. I wanted her wrists to be white and dainty, the blue veins accented. But people's--even white people's--wrists are never actually white. White people are peach, so I wrote it that way. I just couldn't think up the word "pale", or perhaps I only associated it with getting sick.
Anyway, I wrote scads of stuff after that. Everything I wrote was an attempt to translate, "peach I mean peach" into "pale, almost translucent". I usually had the sense of something, the sense of how it should be, but saying what it is exactly does not always work. You must create a feeling. Of course, I am talking about tone. So much of writing is setting a tone; I think it makes the story more than anything else. I didn't think of myself as a writer in those times because I could not do it, because I could not think of things besides "peach I mean peach" when really I want "pale almost translucent".
The first time I wrote a story in which I used "pale, almost translucent" (of course, it wasn't that. I think it was, "her voice soared like the wind on an eagle's wing"), I was in sixth grade. And that was when I decided I wanted to be a writer. It should be sad, but again I only find it charming, that mastering the cliché convinced me I could do this thing. Probably, my sixth grade self, with the translucency and eagle's wings and whatnot, would have been more commercially a success than I ever will be if I publish now.
But there you go.
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Can you talk about any of yours?
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Connor is supposed to be sleeping with Jack and Ianto, but mostly they're just bantering around the Hub right now.
Spangel is a surprise by me and Lynne for the ficathon.
And the Jinnie is self indulgent shmoop with smut and neuroses.
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Oh cool! You and Lynne, together again!