Last night in my writing class we started talking about books we've set aside. Some people have come back to them and finished them. Others have specially organized drawers for books they've never finished.
Like everybody else, I have stories I've never completed. I also have some that I finished that should really just be burned. But I hang on to them, for a lot of reasons.
I started writing stories about as soon as I could write. But the first book I remember finishing, I wrote in 7th grade. It's your typical girl-meets-boy novella. My main character is an ice skater so that figures heavily into the plot. The book is called, "Dreamer" and I even drew the cover art by copying a pose I liked from an Ice Capades program book from a show that my family went to.
The whole thing is handwritten and safely tucked away in a box in the garage along with my college diploma, some notes from high school and an autographed Jack Wagner concert program. *sigh* I don't want anyone to see the book (let alone read it!) but I'm proud of it. It reminds me that I've had this desire for a long time. And it shows me that I can finish what I started.
I'm still a dreamer. I probably always will have my head up in the clouds. But the view's good from up here. And I truly believe that dreams CAN come true.
12 comments:
Loved Jack Wagner :)
It's a wonderful thing to have your novel tucked away. It's like a hidden treasure, even if no one else ever sees it!
That's cool that you kept your story. Maybe someday you'll want to get it out again and possibly work on it so more. :)
If the book features a figure skater, I'd certainly be a fan!
I grew up dreaming of becoming an ice skater. When we left New Jersey for California I hugged my Ridells to my flat chest and cried my eyes out. I still dream about skating.
If we don't dream, nothing's going to come true. I have those drawers, although I've lost the rejection slips I got from Cosmo & Redbook when I was about twelve! I just picture those editors now and smile. :)
How wonderful to have that still. I have poetry I wrote in fifth gradea and eighth grade that I am SO happy I kept. (My mom was NOT a saver so we don't have too much from my childhood).
Did you swoon when Jack Wagner gave you his autograph? :0)
PJ -- I had a whole scrapbook and photo album of Jack Wagner :) and I am glad to still have that first novel.
Rena -- I don't think I've read that story since I wrote it! But who knows...
Patty -- I'm still fascinated by figure skaters, too.
Val -- I would love to see you out on the ice, of course we don't have much here, do we?
Becky -- I had the audacity as a teenager to submit to Simon & Schuster...I hope those editors are long gone!
Kelly -- Not only did I get an autograph, I got a kiss! I was in a state of pure bliss for WEEKS after!
How appropriate that the book is titled "Dreamer". I think that dreaming is the way we accomplish our goals. I am certain you will reach yours!
(New chapters are back up on the Monarch blog, just so you know.)
Kudos to you Sherrie! Some people go through their entire lives wondering what it is they're supposed to do. You're very lucky to have always known.
I used to be a competitive figure skater (on the adult circuit), and surprisingly (at least I find it surprising), I have never written a story about skating. I've got all the inside information, the correct terminology, and lots of ideas based upon my experience, but the stories do not come. Maybe I'm too close to it all? And I just remember how tough a life it seemed for the young girls I knew. They were so dedicated and their lives were the ice.
All this being said, I'd love to read a great story with figure skating at its heart. It's the next best thing to being out there on the ice again.
Glam -- Dreamer was a good title, wasn't it!
Suzanne -- I have always known. Now if I could just get my foot in the door!
Tara -- You should absolutely write a skating book -- I'd buy it! But I know what you mean about being too close to it. I've had issues with that myself...
Howdy. Found your blog while ego-searching for my new book (isn't that how we all find other writers?) because there was a review of it in the blogroll, saw the topic, and realized you were talking about something interesting.
Ideas work sort of like junk in ocean currents; at any given time some are bobbing along on the surface, some are washing up on the beaches for the public to see and maybe take home and decorate with, and most are somewhere way down deep changing into something else, to float up thousands of miles away and ages later. Ideas I had before I was twenty, which was ABRUPT LINE NOISE ago, still occasionally show up in current work. I keep folders of partial work with ideas and notes, and eventually some folders become so heavy that they fall out of the drawer and into the word processor and become books. At the moment looking at folders and notebooks and the rate at which I finish work, if I never have another idea, I'll have to live to be 134 to get done with them all.
The idea for TALES OF THE MADMAN UNDERGROUND, the latest one and my 28th published, was present in my head around the time I wrote my 4th novel, which was MORE LINE NOISE ago. There's an older set of notebooks -- maybe 35,000 words of a novel -- that I plan to get back to one of these ages.
Nothing wrong with a long gestation period. Or at least there'd better not be.
Keep on keeping on ....
John Barnes
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