I Was a Disturbed Child

For some reason, I thought that my writing became dark with the introduction of The Great Gatsby (which I read my senior year) and darker by reading Russian Literature (just this year). However, this is very untrue.

On my way back to WDM for the summer (where, sadly, I will be working at A&F every opportunity I get), I've made a week-long pit stop at my mother's house in Kville. There, I discovered my giant old Mac (remember the ones with the clear colored backs? Yeah. Mine is green,) some stories that I wrote in high school. I was surprised that I actually like them, and some are even worth editing up.

The first I read I barely remembered writing. It was a very short, tenish page 'murder mystery' written in first person titled "Bed of Roses". This boy is dating one girl, having sex with another, having sex with a boy, and having sex with his female teacher. Then the girl he's having sex with ends up murdered, then the boy, then the teacher. Then the girlfriend is found guilty and serves life in jail. ((So I'm reading this and thinking "What the HELL was I thinking? This isn't a murder mystery at all. It was obvious that the girlfriend did it, and then she did, and now she's in jail. What the fuck.")) So I continue reading it, there's an epilogue, he's talking about how he's found a new boyfriend and he's happy, he's starting over, and nobody ever found out it was him or that he buried the weapon under a bed of roses his mother just planted. ((At which case I was like "OH YEAH! Now I remember. He killed them all along.")) It's really rough, but I think I can edit it up into something very worthwhile.

Then, on a not dark note, I wrote a story my sophomore year that I'd entirely forgotten about. It's more than 100 pages, and it's basically about this gay boy's introduction into popularity. It's FULL of sex, partying, drinking, going to the beach, shopping, clubbing... and it's not entirely awful. Maybe a little over the top, but I like it. I can tell that GossipGirl was definitely an inspiration when I wrote it--I just can't believe that I wrote it my sophomore year of high school, before I had 'seriously' gotten into any of those things!

And on Recent Writings: The first draft of "The Railroad" is coming to an end. Which is fantastic, because then I can really get in there and edit it. It's not a novel, a novella for sure, but I'm okay with that. I write what needs to be written, and this is what came out of it.

Other Projects: I'm working on a novel titled "Snow", and I wish I could explain it but that proves to be a difficult task. With "The Railroad" I don't even explain the plot, just the characters, but there are so many more in this... So the beginning. It begins (as did a story I wrote for my first semester fiction workshop) with a young man discovering his best friend, a young woman, dead in her apartment. Though ruled a suicide, he's convinced that she was murdered and decides that he alone will solve her murder. SOME of the people we meet along the way are Caroline, a high school senior dating two boys, Susan, who's having an affair with her boss, and Cameron, who's sleeping his way to the top of the modeling business. (It's definitely a family story. Heartwarming.)

I'm also working on some short stories; I plan on putting them together into a collaborative book, but how I'm going to do that is still up in the air. Some of the stories include a reporter who falls in love with a prostitute, a lesbian couple of an author and a bookstore owner, a woman who hallucinates that the man she loves is in love with her also and is in her apartment, and a very religious person who tries peyote and has a vision that Jesus calls her on the phone to tell her that God and Heaven don't exist. (Another book to read to your children at bedtime.)

Well, I've rambled about my writing for long enough. I SHOULD be working on writing these stories, not writing about them. 

-Abashed in Abercrombie