My fourth novel was entitled THE COUSIN IN THE ATTIC. It was about a teenage girl who's hearing strange noises above her. It's like the ceiling is alive. One day she investigates and finds her cousin living in the attic. The cousin is a fugitive of the law, accused of pyromania in her hometown. Around the same time, mysterious fires erupt in the city. The cousin sneaks out to cause these fires. The main character's parents believe in the cousin's innocence, which is why they hide her, but the MC knows better. Does she turn her cousin in? Her ill feelings worsen when she finds out that one of the fires caused a death. I remember making the cousin appear angelic, but she dressed like a bad girl for her fiery outings--I was trying too hard with the symbolism thing. I was around twenty-one-years-old when I wrote this rough, clunky novel.
Looking through my computer files, I notice that I did not keep any of my writings pre-2003, with the exception of poetry. In the 90's and early in the millennium I used disks with Smith & Corona and Brother word processors. It was possible to convert them to Word, but the formatting would have been all off. Anyway, I seriously did not want to transfer my heinous experimental novels to my new flash drives; these poorly written projects never went anywhere with agents or editors. My writing improved with each book, and I focused on that fact
So, I completely forgot about this book until I was answering interview questions. I was amazed that I forgot about it. How do you forget a novel you've written? Perhaps I forgot because it was so bad. Would you like to share any early creations that fill you with dread or humor?
CONTESTS
Mary Campbell is hosting a fantastic contest consisting of a Barnes and Noble gift card and YA books. The deadline is Monday the 5th.
Also, I have a contest winner. My five book giveaway contest ended yesterday and a person was chosen at random. One lucky person is getting Heather Graham's Seance, Lisa Scottioline's Daddy's Girl, Robert B. Parker's Now and Then, Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan, and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Also, because I've won so many contests lately, I'm in a generous mood and will be giving the contest winner one surprise bonus book. That makes it a total of six books.
I used a Google Docs spreadsheet for entries and random.org to pick out the winner. The winner is #9 on my spreadsheet, and that person happens to be
Woo hoo, Jemi. Enjoy all your books.
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29 comments:
I have some BAD short stories I wrote when I was about 16 or thereabouts! Cringe-inducing teenage pretentious clap trap!! Yuck! LOL!!
The Cousin in the Attic sounds like a really good story though - I like the premise - maybe it's not as bad as you think!! It sounds a gazillion times better than the stories I wrote as teenager!
:-)
Congratulations to Jemi Fraser!! Yay!
Take care
x
Thank you!! What a great start to the day :) I'm so excited!!
As to bad stories, I've always written, but trying to publish didn't even cross my mind until a year & a bit ago... so I have tons of terrible stuff! It's all written just for me, just for fun.
In particular there is a not finished story set about 1000 years ago in the Scottish highlands. Dreadfully predictable plot line :)
Thanks again!
I think I lost an awful lot of material in the transfer from disks too.
Too bad. Even if the novels are dreadful, they might have made for a fun re-read some day... fifty years from now. =)
I had a fantasy adventure story based around a guy I had a crush on. How painful is that? =) However, the main character's name was Cera (pronounced Sara), which I do still like as a name.
Some early short stories are happily forever lost. I've never forgotten about a whole novel, but I have a couple I haven't looked at in quite a while.
Congrats to Jemi!
Congrats to Jemi! And thanks for having the contest, Medeia!
I recently sorted through all my old writings. They were so bad it was pretty hilarious! I shredded all that old stuff to make room for more. :) Actually, it's fun going through the bad writings because it shows how much I'm improving. And that's always a great thing!
I just tend to forget all of my awesome ideas before I have a chance to write them down haha. I've only written 2 books so it's kind of hard to forget about either of them.
Congrats, Jemi!! :D
Somewhere in a drawer I have the first draft of the MG MS I'm still trying to launch. It's bristling with repeated words, meandering passages and extraneous characters, and it's horrendously overwritten. If I ever manage to get it published, you can bet I'll share whole passages.
Your cousin in the attic premise sounds intriguing, actually.
Congrats to Jemi!
I have a few of those hidden away somewhere. I try to forget about them because there is always some little thing that pulls me in and makes me think I can make something happen with it...when it reality, they just need to die.
Congrats Jemi!
I love your girl in the attic idea! My critique buddy and I were talking about books we have written. She reminded me about a fantasy ya I had written. I had totally forgotten about it. I guess I'm just too excited about my current wip. =)
Yay for Jemi! New books just in time for summer break! :D
I am not sure if I have any "lost books"... I really just started getting serious about my writing this year, but I have written a lot in the past. I'm sure it's all scattered around somewhere but there's nothing I'm dying to find.
Although I was cleaning out my basement today and found a box of books from when I was a kid (think Sweet Valley Twins and Choose Your Own Adventure) and also my diary. It chronicles (very poorly and not very often) that rough year of moving to a new town AND having a birthday party that NO ONE came to.
Oh, the humanity. Some writing is better left forgotten. Lol!
Hi, Medeia! I'm only on my second novel, though lots of ideas scribbled on paper for others, so I don't know what it's like to forget about my characters or storyline.
One day, though, I hope to have completed as many novels as you and even publish something to show for all the hard work & effort put forth over the past few months.
In the meantime, I'll continue dreaming of my characters and praying that some super agent connects w/ my manuscript.
What about your long, lost story? Do you plan on doing anything w/ it? Although you may disagree, it sounds pretty cool!
It's so interesting, isn't it, how much a book means to you when there is one or two, but when there are SEVERAL you can see all the flaws and move on to improving your work. I have a floppy disc just like that with about 2/3 of my 'first' book--I will never go back to that one--not sure if I COULD--the old Macintosh version of Works may not be retrievable, the disc is probably corrupt--even if I could find a computer that HAD that kind of drive...
The hidden cousin story sounds intriguing though!
I have a novel I wish I could forget about!
I have some bad high school writing filed away, but I didn't start writing book length stuff until two years ago. I'm sure in a few years I'll think it's crap but for now I still love all of them.
Hope you have a great 4th, chica!
Oh, man. I've got notebooks of horrible stories from when I was younger (they make me cringe now, but I can't really bring myself to toss them since they were my first stories). They are pretty entertaining, though ;)
And congrats to Jemi!
Old Kitty – The execution of the novel was far worse than the actual premise.
Jemi – I probably had that problem of providing no foreshadowing or too many clues.
Anne – I was so embarrassed by them (and even more embarrassed that I actually submitted them) that I had no problem chucking them. But my earlier writing was good practice.
Paul – I probably forgot about a whole entire novel because I wrote so many in my youth, and some were forgettable.
Laura – I forgot all about the shredding. Not only did I get rid of the disks, but I shredded the hard copies. I kept a few synopses, though.
Amanda – Definitely keep a journal so you don’t forget your ideas. I have one in my purse, on my desk, everywhere.
Mary – You should keep working at it or start all over if you can’t let go of your MS. I only really liked one of my old manuscripts, which dates post-2003, so I take elements from it and reuse them for new wips since I can’t let go of that one.
Jaydee-- That’s how I feel about most of my old stuff.
Carolyn – That also helps with the forgetting: getting far more excited about the new wips.
Dangerous – I got rid of my journals. They were hard to read with my sloppy writing and redundancies. Sometimes I wonder if I should have kept them to remind myself of my teen voice long ago.
Tory – No, I’ll let this one go. I don’t feel anything for it. And thanks for stopping by. I’ve been following and lurking on your blog for a while.
Hart – I was so prolific, but in a bad way, that I was churning out a bunch of low quality novels. Now I take longer writing something, and I’m so relieved that my writing has improved. I was able to convert my disks, but the thing is every single line had a return at the end of it, so I would have had to backspace every line in a paragraph. And there were these little box symbols everywhere. I just decided to delete/throw out everything.
Anne – I probably have close to ten manuscripts that I’d like to forget about it.
Karen – I wasn’t one of those meant-to-be-published teen, twenty-something writers. Even though I’m still sort of young, I consider myself a late bloomer. You have a happy 4th yourself.
Lea- They can be entertaining. Some of my old poems make me cringe or laugh.
I wrote a super duper crappy book back in high school that I never even consider counting when listing the books I've written. Until I read your post, I'd sort of forgotten about it. Technology has changed so much over the years, that I don't think I could find an electronic copy of that garbage even if I tried. So perhaps forgetting about it isn't such a bad thing.
Gah, how I loved the pic of the hard copy disk. How I remember those? I have most of my "teen" writings printed out and in files. But the ghost story I've been thinking about MGing from those days is no where to be found. Sighs...just the skeleton of the story(no pun intended), but that should be fine to work from.
I srsly like the Cousin in the Attic. Maybe it is something to revisit along the way. And thanks for sharing your writing journey and how many books you've written. It's always fun to hear about others steps along the way.
Anything - even journal entries - I wrote in middle school makes me cringe when I read it.
Yours doesn't sound bad. Maybe the cousin had a mental illness/split personality thing going on.
I used to write things out by hand, so I have a bag full of them. I loved them at the time, but yeah. Written in Jr. High and High school. :S
It is fun sometimes to go back and read them and remember where you were at the time and see how far you've come. :)
I have some, ahem, learning-experience novels too. :) They are both as melodramatic as they come!
Way to go Jemi!!!!
I love finding those books that I had forgotten about. The missing novel you speak of sounds really intriguing, possibly something you'll go back too and make a wonderful book??
I think you forgot the novel because it didn't "count" - I did exactly the same thing.
I wrote a complete novel and even had an agent interested in it. Turns out I wrote a really compelling first ten pages. Literally.
Writing is a craft. You have to learn it and that means lots of practice. Looks like you mastered it.
Yay, Jemi!
My WIP is not my first manuscript, either. You're right--authors often debut with books that aren't their first completed novels. Funny that you forgot one until you were being interviewed!
I hope you have a great week, Medeia!
Kate – Yeah, I definitely don’t miss these early novels.
Krista – You should have seen how excited I was to get my first flash drive. I was thinking, “You mean I can get rid of all these disks for my day job and writing and put everything on one device???”
Myrna – I remember making her out to be crazy, but at the time I wrote melodramatically.
Danyelle – Cheers to improvements.
Samantha – I’m so glad I toned my writing down with realism.
Jen – I really doubt I’ll revisit this one. Once I abandon a book, I look forward to shiny, new ideas.
Anne – I’m so glad that many of us put things into perspective by abandoning, yet appreciating, our earlier works. I’ve come across some train wreck stories involving authors who are adamant about getting their early writing published. Even though there are self-publishing success stories out there, I’m aware of shoddy books getting self-published because people can’t let go of the fantasy of getting their first, but seriously flawed, novel out to the public.
Dawn - Many writers whom I admire admit to this, so it feels great to be in their company.
Congrads Jemi! Bad stories! Oh my, Medeia. I have written some in my time, but SHHHH, don't tell anyone! ;)
When I first started writing, I thought, that all my stories would be published immediately, because of my MOST EXCELLENT writing skills. Boy was I shocked when the rejections for that first picture book started flowing in. (They flowed better than the story.)
Fast forward to now and I realize I did NOT know what the heck I was doing. But I'm a better writer because of those rejections. I still have the story. I plan on reworking it and making it SUPER FANTASTIC!
Awesome post Medeia. :)
grats jemi!
i registered a screenplay with the writers guild years ago... never went anywhere
Robyn - Thanks. I also dreamed of immediate success. I was so utterly shocked by all the rejection.
laughingwolf - I haven't tackled the screenplay yet. I'm not ready. Kudos to those who do it.
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