The Stories That Started It

Like any writer, I have a lot of notebooks. I was trying to shove a whole bunch of these books into my desk drawer the other day, and I came across a few gems: two bright pink notebooks, and a few sticker covered composition books. In these books are some of the first stories I wrote, in the form of doodles and illegible handwriting, of course. 

Going through these first stories was really entertaining (I completely forgot about the desk drawer dilemma) My handwriting and spelling skill back then was pretty much nonexistent, so I drew scenes out in pictures. But all of this got me thinking about the stories that we, readers and writers, start out with. 

I believe the earliest book features a Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmeron fanfiction. I had a crazy horse obsession for the first 10 years of my life, and Spirit was my favorite movie. I created a very fantastical horse story about Spirit and his horse friend, Cloudy. This story had only drawings, which I guess was an exercise in showing vs. telling? They endured the hardships of being a horse in a 5 year old’s imagination (i.e. torture, losing friends, parents dying, evil humans) 

Disney Fan Fictions

I also loved Disney, particularly, Sleeping Beauty. I wrote so many spin offs with Aurora going to princess school. And one of those is actually narrated with words. I distinctly remember drawing the story, and then forcing myself to write in some context for what was happening. The writing part of it took place over about a year, I think. It’s interesting to read because as the story progresses you can see how I gradually learned to write and spell better. 

Among Sleeping Beauty and Spirit, I loved the American Girl books and Horse Diaries. American Girl was mainly because I had a 1700’s phase, and after reading all of Felicity’s books, I decided to read the others. 

Horses and Harry Potter

I started reading The Horse Diaries because when I was little, I didn’t really enjoy reading. I did get showered with lots of horse books, though. My family is pretty smart because it worked! I love reading now. The Horse Diaries was my favorite series for a long time, and I still own the first 12 books in the series. 

Then came Harry Potter. *cracks knuckles* There were about two Christmases where almost all I got were Harry Potter related things. I have a cool mug, multiple wands, and a chess set… yeah, there’s a lot. Needless to say, I loved the series and I spent a ton of time dressed up in my bathrobe with a wand. 

Gail Carson Levine’s books were really what started me writing. Not drawing stories, but writing. I loved Ella Enchanted, so I breezed through a lot of her other books. At this time, I was also discovering that authors had websites. On Levine’s website, I found out that she has published writing craft books too! So I asked for Writing Magic for Christmas, started saving up for a laptop, and took out a red notebook. 

And the Dream Began…

Then I spent evenings writing a Harry Potter-fairy-forest story. I started looking into self publishing. I dreamed of publishing that book. It was called The Adventures of Joy Fitzgerald, and basically told the story of Joy Fitzgerald going to magic fairy school in magic forests and battling the evil Lord Gargenbush and his evil bugs. (Very muchly Harry Potter inspired) After I finished it, I started fantasizing about self publishing it. I started doing research and typing it out on my computer. 

In the end, I didn’t end up publishing it as a 10 year old. Most of these stories will probably never see the light of day for at least another decade (or when my drawers need cleaned out again) But it’s really interesting and fun to go back and look at these. The first stories that are so terribly written, it’s kind of funny. It’s even more interesting to look at the books and movies that I enjoyed reading and watching, and eventually tried to mimic. 

So, tell me, what are some of your beginning stories? What are your “Starting stories?” I hope you have a great rest of your day, thanks for reading! 

-Hannah

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