 |
| Credit for the image and contest belong here. |
the third day - your first attempt at writing
Oh, good. The keyword is 'attempt.' We can take that word rather loosely.
I first attempted writing when I was five or six. I have forgotten my plots and characters but not, I think, because of the distance of time. I forgot because the plot and characters did not matter much to me then. But I remember well certain other elements of the experience of writing. I can still experience the shiver from the magical act of putting notepaper in a three-ring-binder and making my own book to scribble things in (a blank book! I have never recovered completely from the delight of an scribblin' book). I can find myself, as plainly as yesterday, sitting at a little table in the red room across from Elizabeth and writing with great solemnity, because to write was surely a great and solemn thing then. And while I do not remember much about the people or storyline who populated those pages, I clearly recall a setting with a gate and a waterfall and a rainbow. I so badly wanted to have a waterfall and a rainbow in my own backyard then, you see, and having it live in my own little book of scribblin' was proverbial balm for this thorn in my side.
There were others later, of course: the adventures of Tom (who built a remote control car that terrorised a stewardess), Mark (I don't remember much about him), Joelle (of the infamous crowns-in-the-oven), Elena (who fought bravely in the battle of the Mashed Potatoes) and Anna (who cleaned a castle in a day using a trolley and a bucket); the ramblings of Bertha and Belinda (whom we liked to scorn simply because we had given them such hideous names); the questionably violent tales of Lucinda, Jane, Beatrice, and Sally (with their youngest brother John... I believe law enforcement on the whole was greatly misunderstood in that one); a rewritten script for a Cinderella play (we crocheted all the dresses for our American Girl dolls... including great flouncing, ruffled ones for the step-sisters); the Nancy Drew diaries (full of scathing wit for that poor cliche-of-a-heroine)... But though the names and faces escape me, I shall always remember the waterfall and the rainbow as the first.
How awesome! 'The battle of Mashed Potatoes'. ☺