The Works

Self Introduction & Beginnings

I first fell in love with writing when I was in Year 6 (2008). I had the most wonderful teacher ever (I still keep in contact with him & his wife to this day!), and one term, he taught our class about writing; narrative writing to be more specific. We were taught about the construction of a story and all the elements - I still remember the ridiculously large A3 sized narrative brainstorm chart that was given to us, and my 11 year old brain was sure it could NEVER fill up a piece of paper that big... Oh, how wrong!!

We wrote a few stories over that school term, and I remember one occasion where our teacher told us to write about a 'journey', or something to that effect (we're going back eight years now, forgive me if I'm a bit slow on the uptake). I wrote about our class pets, the three fish, and their journey down from the city in their fish tank on the passenger seat of my teacher's horrid car. There was a black boggly eyed one called King Kong, Nugget the silvery-gold, and Mango - need I say more about that name? Haha. The story was forwarded to the principal and earned a rather fetching large gold sticker and, much to my embarrassment, the teacher read it out loud to the ENTIRE CLASS!! Still haven't forgiven him for that, to be honest... *twitches*

At the end of the term, our class made its own book; a collection of one select story from each of the students: "21 Stories from the Year 6 Mind Blowers" - I still have that with me almost ten years later, along with the notebook I planned a few of my stories in. It's a little tattered and torn now (as am I), but it holds an important part of my history and self identity. As much as it pains me to say, that notebook holds a story that I wrote which now, looking back, is basically a Vicar of Dibley fan fiction... I know, I know.... My innocent 11 year old self didn't know about fanfic back then, forgive me for the huuuuge level of cringeyness!!

In a nutshell, the plot of my story for the class compilation was this: 

-2 kids staying the night at their Grandma's
-Grandma tells the kids a scary story while they wait for their pizza order to arrive, and there's a large bang at the door. Door gets broken down; it's a dude with a chainsaw
-Dude's name is George and apparently he's come to kill the Grandma after having previously killed her husband
-the pizza guy comes in and whacks the guy with a shovel & he runs off into the night 
-pizza guy turns out to be the kids' long lost uncle (dunno why, maybe an ex criminal himself?? well done 2008 Amy. Great story creating).
-The kids go for pizza only to return home to a note on the doorstep from the kids' dad - their mum was killed in a car crash?? (handwritten note??? WOWZER)
-somewhere the George dude gets arrested (could've been before the funeral, I can't remember exactly) and the pizza guy/uncle takes everyone for free pizza
-turns out I inadvertently named the mum & her brother after my twin cousins... which I didn't realise until a year or so later.... Shit....

WAS I INSANE????? HOW WAS I NOT TAKEN TO A CHILD PSYCHOLOGIST??!!! My goodness...

Unfortunately, crap happened in the year & years following 2008 that all but caused me to not fall out of love with writing, but to lose my mojo - in a way I think that writing here on Wattpad is enabling me to make up for lost time. (I'll be touching on the 'crap' in future chapters).