One of my first memories of a writer is from when I was very young, probably 9 or 10. I decided that I wanted to write a book (although why that thought came to me, I have no idea). So, I did. I wrote what I thought was a novel, though, in reality, it was only 25 or so handwritten pages. It was called "Together Again" and was about a girl my age (with her own horse and rescued puppy, and everything else I wanted but couldn't have) who was kidnapped but her older brother rescued her. I even drew little illustrations for every page. One evening, my babysitter was watching my siblings and me, and when she heard I had written a story, she asked to read it. She taught English in an Elementary school, so to me, she was as good as the biggest and best-known publishers or editors out there.
I gave her the notebook just before I went to bed, and when I woke up she had set it on the table, with sticky notes all over the pages, commenting on different parts. She told me she loved the illustrations, she loved a particular sentence, she loved how sweet some of the characters were, etc. She even said she would use it as an example in her class when she had her students write stories. This experience really boosted my confidence in writing, even to the childish over-confidence that comes with an active imagination plus a little praise. I imagined myself becoming a best-selling novelist and how my book would be taught in schools and used as an example, and how I would be the youngest person ever to have written such a popular book. Eventually, I typed it all out on the computer, gave it a cover, and lots of special pages in front about the characters and such. I even created a title page with a fake ISBN number, publishing company, publishing date, and all the other information I could think of.
Needless to say, later on, I was very embarrassed by my first-ever story and hid it away. But now that it's so many years in the past, I'm no longer embarrassed by it, but rather proud to see how I had completed a whole story and did my best work on it. It's fun to look back at it now and see how much I have improved.
