Sunday 21 September 2014

The Obligatory Background

I realised quite suddenly, after writing up my first post, that I hadn't bothered to give a background. Being new to blogging, I am not sure if this is a mortal sin in the blogosphere or not, but I decided I should rectify that error sharpish. And so here it is, the obligatory background post! Feel free to skip it if you want. I'm sure there will be more interesting posts coming along.

I started writing at a very early age, and I can still remember, rather vividly, the first story I ever wrote.

It was all the way back in primary school (or elementary school for any American readers). Teacher set a competition for the class to write a story that would be featured and hung on the main bulletin board in the hall for anyone in the school to read. Up until that point, I don't remember ever thinking about writing a story, or writing anything at all for that matter. I was an avid reader though, even at that early age, so I suppose it wasn't too much of a stretch for me to jump in, feet first so to speak.

I submitted my story. Two A4 sized pages worth. Not too shabby for a seven year old. It was named Six Inches High, and it involved a young boy who magically got shrunk down to the titular size. As it happened, the teacher loved it, and it ended up winning. That was a defining moment for me; seeing those two pages hanging up in the school hall, seeing people read them, and of course getting praise for something I had created. It was a rather surreal moment for me, and from then on, there was just no stopping me.

A few years later, after hitting Secondary School, I was still writing away. Back then, most of my writing was aimed at children. Another strong memory for me is spending my entire Easter holidays - the whole two weeks of it - writing a book by hand. I got to 145 pages before running out of time. I clearly remember worrying a few times about the possibility of losing all feeling in my hand.

I still have both of those works at home. Six Inches High has since been typed up, while the second story is still in it's hand written form. The paper is looking faded and the writing is terrible (it was over twenty years ago, what would you expect?), but I'm still fond of it, and rather proud of my tenacity.

Some writing milestones for me? Asking for and receiving a typewriter (yes, the manual kind, with an ink ribbon, keys that had a tendency to stick and made it impossible to feed paper into straight); having two short stories published in a webzine (sadly now defunct); upgrading my manual typewriter to an electric one; finally getting a PC with a word processor!

All in all, it has been a rather eventful journey. But the greatest moment so far? Receiving a print copy of my completed book through the post.

Get a copy of my first book, and the opening volume in the Iron City Trilogy at Amazon: Iron City Rebels

1 comment:

  1. I still remember sitting on the bottom bunk bed and my big brother on the top bunk reading his first story to me.Thirty years later he has published his first book. I am proud of you bro :)

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