Writing Meme – Day 4

[erastes]

4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!

Hmm. I can’t really remember the crap I wrote as a child, and then I didn’t write anything else until about 15 years ago. My mother was writing a family saga, so I thought I’d have a go.  I started a kid’s book which was a bit of a social satire on child fostering/social services  - a child is abandoned outside a chip shop and is picked up and taken home by a witch (because they often stop off at chip shops on the way home from their coven nights.)  I wrote about a quarter of it, actually before I ran out of steam—the child found her life very dull (not knowing any better, she thought it was perfectly ordinary) and used to watch the other kids from the small local town, running in the fields or riding their scrubby ponies, and she wished she was one of them.  It was half satire, half comedy. 

Anyway, I couldn’t get it done, and then a few years later found that it was just as well as some bloke called Pratchett (who I hadn’t heard of at that point) had done it far far better than I could ever have done. It’s probably finishable, but now people would just say I copied Pratchett, which I really, really didn’t.

Comments

[taylorbooks.livejournal.com]

Don't you just hate it when that happens? I wouldn't let him stop you though. Especially if it was a middle-grade book as opposed to adult. It sounds like too great a story and idea to chuck it.