I remembered typing in the final sentence of my latest story. It gave me a sense of accomplishment. I sat on my bedroom chair and listened to the sound of the printer shoot out pages of my story. I started to think about how I got to this place in my writing career.
Fanfiction.net was a site I had been introduced to, its what inspired me write my very first story, which was of course a fan fiction and written in script form. It was based on an animated series which was quite popular at the time. It is always an interesting thing to look back at your first story because it tends to be the worst which was true in my case. To me however it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I posted my story on the internet but never got feed back and so I continued on this cycle for several years. Each story may have had a different plot but each were written in a terrible manor. It was not until I reached a roadblock that I started to give up on writing. I had run out of ideas or so I thought I had no idea that I had trapped myself within the confined spaces of my own skill. I started to give up on the idea of writing, I wanted to retire at the age of thirteen no less.
Just when I was about ready to give up I met a man named Troy Fuller. In the middle of one of our many conversations he told me about his own stories which he had wrote. I was even told about one that he had not finished but had been working on for close to a decade. In my young mind I could not even fathom the idea of working on a story for so long. It did not take very long for him to ask me if I wrote my own stories. Once I told him that I did he asked me to bring him one.
In my mind when I delivered the story I thought it was a masterpiece that should be published even though it was only fan-fiction. I was shocked to say the least when I got my first harsh criticism. It goes without saying that even though he was right on every level I was insulted. It it was that very reason why I started up writing again. A problem persisted though I still had no idea what to write about. When I told my good friend Troy about this he suggested I read a book, but for me the idea of reading a book appalled me to no end. More than anything however I wanted to get better at writing and if reading a book meant that would happen than I would do so. The first book I would end up reading was a star wars book, which at the time I was quite into. I can not quite recall the name of the book but I can tell you that it inspired me to write my first semi-original story on the computer. When I started writing on the computer I ran into another problem I had no idea how to type or the design that should be used.
For my first typed story I would once again use a script format that I had modified to be closer to the proper format, or at least to what I believed to be the proper format. It took me about 5 months to write out a few chapters of my first action story. I delivered it to my friend Troy who told me it was better, but then proceeded to point out all the flaws. His criticism did not discourage me it instead encouraged me to go read some more in order to get better.
During my escapade to become a better writer I came across Edgar Allen Poe and his dramatic form of writing. It opened my eyes to a new genre and a plethora of ideas which I just had to get written down. The next story I gave Troy was completely original and received less criticism than the last story. He than encouraged me to read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, followed by The Jungle, Dante's Divine comedy and various other writers who opened my eyes to the different forms of writing that can be done with a drama.
I would take several years before I honed my skill when it came to design, but when I turned in my latest story it was in the proper format most writers used and it was a dramatic story. Even though I still received criticism I found that over the years I had become my most harsh critic. I would now throw away complete stories if I found to many problems with the plot, characters and most important of all the continuity.
So I sat on my desk chair and remembered the long and tiresome road I had to take to get to where I was today. Once the printer finished I picked up the story and started to read through it. I realize what I once thought was good was once again not very good up at all. So I throw out the entire story and look to my computer screen. I skim through the pages to see if I can fix the problems but end up running into more into more issues. I press the backspace key and as the once word filled pages begin to empty, I realize that I still have much to learn but hoped one day that my writing could be used as inspiration for young writers.
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