Cringing at My Old Writing!

Well hello there! Glad to see you here. I was randomly brainstorming some blog post ideas one day and this one popped into my head. I thought it would be entertaining if I dug up a few ancient stories in my labyrinth of LibreOffice Word Documents and see if I can’t cringe at some old writing.

*facedesks* this is probably a bad idea…but I hope you’ll enjoy laughing at my old writing! Let’s dive right in!

Before we get started, I just want to say that I don’t regret writing any of this! I totally understand that they were stepping stones to get me to where I am today. If I hadn’t written all of these stories, I wouldn’t have learned from them and would be a worse writer. So I really do value these stories, even if they’re not presentable to a publisher, they continued to push me on the road to reaching that point!

At the same time, I don’t want to talk as if I’m a pro writer now and don’t have anything else to learn. Far from it! I’ll probably look back at the novels I’m writing today and cringe just like this. But yeah, just so that’s clear, I’m not pretending to be really good at writing. At least I’m better than I was, and that’s what matters! 😅 Okay, off we go!

For the first story we look at I thought I’d try to find one of the stories I wrote when I was like, 8 or 9. I can’t fact-check that because I was too young to think of writing down the date in the document.

Oh boy…just looking at this document makes me cringe! 😂

This story is titled…”Jake and Kasey: Mystery of the Cobras”! Wow, such a fascinating title! Let me give you all a look at the table of contents!

1: Lost

2: The Trip

3: Kidnapped

4: The Plan

5: Escape

6: Disccoshione (Yes, this is indeed supposed to be “Discussion” but I didn’t know how to spell it. 🤪)

7: The Starting

8: The Chase

9: In the Woods

10: Discovery

11: Captured

Oh boy…just looking at those chapter names makes me cringe! 😂

Each of those chapters is about…150 words each! The total word count for the book comes in at a whopping 1,704! This thing is smaller than a single chapter in my recent novels! But enough about the word count. Let’s start reading chapter one, shall we? 🤓

*clears throat* Chapter 1! Lost! (I’m actually just gonna copy and paste the chapter so we can both cringe together. Enjoy. 😂

“Come on Jake! Were going to be late!” fourteen year old, slender Kasey yelled over her shoulder as she ran toward the bus.

“Coming Kasey I just have to grab my…..” Jake, a fifteen year old, buff, brown haired boy trialed off.

“Oh what is it now!” Kasey grumbled.

“My backpack! I left it right here and know its gone!”

BARK! Their dog spot walked into view. Their was Jake’s backpack in the dogs mouth.

“Oh you miserable dog!” Kasey scolded. Spot’s eyes sank as he started to walk away.

“Oh I did not mean that!” Kasey pitied the dog. Spot lit up again. The bus honked. “Got to go.” Jake yelled to Kasey.

“Bye spot see you sometime soon,”Kasey said fondly

The two kids ran out of the house and toward the bus,which was honking furiously.

“A little delay!” Jake apologized to the driver. They took some seats and were off.

Oh dear…well, that was…a wonderful chapter! We had a conflict, a very clear description of our characters, and a resolution! So well done, past me. So well done! *applause*

I can’t believe the number of typos in that 150-word chunk of writing. Look, I don’t pride myself on my grammar, it’s certainly not the best, but I think it’s safe to say I’ve improved a little bit! 😂

I won’t bore you with the remainder of the book, but I’ll summarize it here really quick:

Basically, the book follows these two kids, Jake and Kasey, on an adventure. They randomly fly to Japan to see some family friends, and get kidnapped as soon as they arrive. They easily escape after luckily overhearing some of their captor’s plans, and meet up with the family friends, the “Jones”. With the Jones’ son, who is conveniently the exact same age as Jake, they go exploring and, on accident, run into some of the villains who kidnapped them.

“I thought you should have given them some knockout gas.”

“I still think it was your fault!”

Then the men came into view. They both wore masks and guns.

“Are you asking for it?” said the taller man.

“n-n-no-b-b-b-boss!” the shorter man cowered.

“then lets go!”

Just then Judas sneezed. The two men whirled around.

“Hey! Come back!” the boss yelled.

Escaping, they decide to return later to see if the villains have a hideout nearby, and lo and behold, they randomly find it! When the bad guys get back, they are there to capture them! Whooo!! Heroes! 😂

I actually wrote a second book about Jake and Kasey. It has a new bad guy, and they don’t randomly take a trip to Japan, but the plot is nearly identical! *facedesks* Good times!

Okay! Let’s skip a couple years to when I was maybe…9 or 10? This was when I wrote my first official novella, finishing the draft at a whopping 25,873 words. I was actually quite proud of this book, and still feel like it was a pretty impressive feat for a 10-year-old, but it certainly isn’t the high-quality story I thought it was!

This story is called “Trek to Save the World”! Ah yes…returning to the cringe names as well…I think you can easily guess what this story comprises. Yes, you got it! A lonely man in a random village gets selected to join a group of men traveling to a far destination to fight a random dark evil that will slowly destroy the world. They reach it after a lot of effort, and…kill the random evil. Sound familiar? Heh heh…I’m pretty sure I wrote this directly after I’d read The Hobbit for the first time…every writer has one, but this was my rendition of the classic young writer’s “The Lord of the Rings Knock-Off”.

The only thing that made this even worse was that…well, the random evil was just a green goo that slowly consumed the world…and there were singing monkeys in this book. Actually, the singing monkey was kinda cute…I remember tearing up when I killed him off… *coughs* anyways! Moving on! Let’s look at a couple snippets of the actual story, shall we? See if my writing improved at all from the Jake and Kasey stories?

This is the first paragraph of the story…and oh man…just prepare yourself for the worst info dump you’ve ever read! 😂

Amos looked out the window of his small hut that he lived in. He looked out at the big village that he also lived in. It was a cozy place to be in. There was a small fireplace in one corner of his house. His bed was neatly made in the other corner. A small kitchen took place in another room adjoining the living room. It was a wonderful house. The kitchen had pots and pans and everything that Amos needed.

Good gracious! I feel like I’m just shriveling up inside as I read this! How could I have thought that stating he lived in a hut and lived in a village was a smart thing to do? It’s quite obvious that he lives in the village if his hut is there! Oh dear…

Hurrying right along, I can just see how inspired this story was by The Hobbit. The only problem is, each random adventure they run into has absolutely no point but to extend the word count! Oh man…I can hardly bear reading any more of this! But let me share with you one of the singing monkey’s songs, because it’s hilariously awful! 😆

When it was night, they stopped the group. Jordan and Stanford stepped up onto a trunk of a tree and started to order the men to set up camp. The monkey with the banjo played a small tune to keep the men going.

Keep up setting up camp,

Before you all get damp!

If you don’t set up the tents,

You all will get dents,

From the rain,

So strain,

To set up camp,

Before you all get damp.

The men did strain to set up camp, and sure enough, they almost did get damp. They did set up the tents and they all got inside before the rain started to fall.

Oh dear. I hope you enjoyed that. 😂

That’s honestly pretty much it! The story progresses through random adventures until at last, they reach the “evil goo’s” fortress. Then, sneaking in, they are able to kill it somehow and return home! No twists, no turns. It’s honestly pretty straightforward. 😆

Well, I hope you all enjoyed reading this post and cringing with me at some of my old writing!! It was fun, but I don’t think I can bear sharing anymore, lest my insides shrivel up at the pure embarrassment! 😂

If there’s one lesson to be shared from this post, it’s to make sure you keep track of your achievements along the road and recognize that you are always improving in your writing, even when you feel discouraged and stuck. Just look back at some old projects and it’ll be pretty clear that you’re a whole lot better now!

Thanks so much for reading! Until later,

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