In my 18 years on this planet, I’ve had a fulfilling career as an author. I wrote and self-published my first book while I was in elementary school. It consisted of seven pages of half-folded printer paper, two staples in the center, and some tape. It took an entire half-hour and a bag of Doritos to complete.
It was a self-help book called, ‘TOONUP!” and was divided into two parts: a tutorial on how to draw characters from the game Toontown, and my own bizzare self-insert comic about me destroying the boss of all bad-guys that ever existed. Finished, giddy with joy, and full of blissful ignorance, I went to the classroom bookshelf and threw it in the “advanced reading section.”
Upon reflection, this was really silly and embarrassing.
First of all, I had zero experience with drawing and very minimal experience with writing. I could barely color in the lines and I had the audacity to try to teach others my terrible doodling techniques?
Second, my content was horrible. When I wrote the story, I didn’t try to tell a simple anecdote with one or two characters. I tried to tell a complex, in-depth fable with a surplus of plot entities, deep character development, and hypothetical morale consequences. There is absolutely no way anyone would understand it without prior research, and even then it’d still comes across as a bumbling, incoherent mess. If that wasn’t enough, I also included terrible drawing tutorials–all of this on seven pieces of half-folded printer paper.
If that wasn’t bad enough, I was sharing with the world the embarrassing fact that I played this ridiculous game. In a world dominated by first person shooters, horror, and gore, it was a game that should not have been in my vocabulary. All my classmates were playing cool games, like Call of Duty and zombie games, and here I was admitting I played Disney games? I’d look like an idiot.
That didn’t stop me. I managed to ignore my common sense long enough to convince myself this was a good idea. The thing was shoddy, incomplete, and devoid of any real meaning, but it was my shoddy, incomplete, useless thing. I cared more about the creation of content than the response it’d provoke from others.
I think Sir Ken Robinson said it best when he said,
“Kids will take a chance. If kids don’t know, they’ll give it a go.”
I had done something I would never do today: put myself out there. I took a leap of faith and didn’t worry about what others thought. So in the spirit of naive-ness, I’ve decided to take that leap of faith again.
A couple of days ago, I signed up for National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. You have the month of November to write a 50,000 word rough draft for a novel. There are no prizes; just the satisfaction of having written a novel. You can write about anything you want: you can write an epic fantasy adventure, a nail-biting mystery book, or even saucy love story. The only limit is your imagination.
Well in this case, it’s my imagination, and my imagination is a dry well.
I’ve got two ideas for a novel. The first idea I have is about the first human going to a tran-species college in space. The story would revolve around college life and the implications of space racism. It’d be easy to write about because it’s relative to me, and college is wacky so there’s a lot that I can write about. After sitting on it for a week, the idea lost its appeal.
The second idea is the one I’ll be sticking with.
I’m excited about the opportunity I’ve been given. Will I get to 50,000 words? Who knows. I might not make it to 50, but I won’t know unless I try.
So what happened to the first book I wrote? It was inevitable I’d be the laughing-stock of our classroom, right?
Nope. People loved it.
On the day of release, people were coming up to me telling my how great it was, asking if they could borrow it and share it with their friends. It got to the point where people I’d never met would come from other classrooms to try and get their hands on the book.
After a week or so, the book escaped by grasp and disappeared forever. I’d learn years later that my teacher threw it away. She didn’t want the entire class to be influenced by my horrible spelling skills.