Four Score...The Best of...Call Me Ishmael

So next week is the first day of the creative writing class that I will be teaching. Its an elective so I have room to play around and do some fun things like Free Writes, Flash Fiction, maybe some Vignettes or what not. I realized a few days ago that Blogfests are an awesome way to practice different styles of writing and I've grabbed some ideas from the many going on right now.  From best action sequence, funniest dialogue, scene painting, all the aspects of writing all floating together on the wispy ether of the internet. Score!

Rabbit Hole, Oceanside

I decided to work on story beginnings on the first day because it is easy to recognize a lot of them even if you are a high schooler that only reads because you are forced, under pain of bad grades and ruining your future, to read. 

But beginnings are a good place to start, as is said often down the rabbit hole..."Start at the beginning and when you get to the end...stop." Well said.

sweet baby "novel'

That got me thinking about my own beginnings as an author and how a simple assignment in a college writing class became the seed of my first completed novel.  

It was not the first one published...because it was vast (over 100,000 words) and meandering (a plot that spanned the globe) and a little of everything which made it a whole lot of nothing in particular. 

But it was an amazing learning experience and my sweet baby still sits on my bookshelf in all its yellowed printer paper glory awaiting me to pay it some attention.

Alas, I've moved on, but I still consider revising and slashing and burning, quite frankly, a lot of it in order to get it into submission shape.

What were your beginnings?  Did you start out with a bang like the amazing literature offerings we all know or was more of a soft rustle that eventually became your writerly roar?

Until next time...Go Write!