Young Writer? Inexperienced Writer?

I just wanted to point out that I've been writing since 1991, so I guess that makes it 18 years I've been a writer (out of 27). I wrote stories before that date, even books, including comic books, and some of them were at least stapled, but I don't consider any of those my first actual story. My first actual story was titled "A Home Run Adventure" and I made four copies of it. I think that I will consider my first literary work by that criteria: that is--that I purposefully created more than just one copy.

The whole story behind that story was that it was an entry into a short story contest held at an academic convention between the ACE schools of Vancouver Island. I would have been in grade 4, if my memory is correct, and 9 years old, and the year was 1991. I have no recollection of the plot of the story, except that I can assume the protagonist hits a home run. The contest required three copies of the short story, and I remember printing out the story on horrendous, yellow printer paper, with the perforations running up and down both edges. The poor quality of the paper, combined with the fact that some of the ends of the words ran off the edge of the page, and that the toner was running low, meant that the whole thing was barely legible. I didn't win any prizes for that story that year, but I'd say it was the actual start of my literary career. I doubt that any copy of that story survives; maybe someday a historian will lament that it was lost, but I'm not too shaken up about it.

The next year, my mom had got an electronic type-writer, and she was nice enough to let me use it to type out that year's entry into the short story contest. I used crisp, white paper, and the toner was dark enough to actually read. The electronic typewriter gave my work a really professional look. It had to help that I was a meticulous speller and competent with grammar at that age, which was a somewhat rare thing in our small circle of small schools. Content-wise, I switched tacks, and instead of writing about baseball that year, I wrote a kind of moralizing tale about a 10-year-old kid who invites his new neighbour to church with him, and ends up evangelizing the whole neighbour's family. This story actually won second prize in the short story contest. If I remember the details correctly, it was my cousin who won first prize. I remember reading her story and thinking it was pretty good, but that my story was better, but to this day, I can't remember the topic of her story. Anyways, it was this second story that first gave me the idea that I could one day grow up to be a writer.

If you publically recognize a 10-year-old for doing something well, you will have an impact on what shklee believes he can do for the rest of his life. I know, because throughout my teenage years and college years, that Second Prize was always lurking in my subconscious, urging me on to be literary. Not that this was the only pressure. Of course I was also a voracious reader, and it was also at this time that my grandma published her first book, Nicola and Granny, which I also devoured. My brother and I were naturally excited to read that "the author lives in Victoria, BC, and has four children and two grandsons [!]" and it was this that led me to the feeling that I've always held deep down that writing is in my blood.

However, it would be many years before I entered any more contests or submitted any material for publication. The next thing I would count is my journalistic work for the highschool yearbook in 1998, 1999, and 2000, which included some editing and judging poetry submissions. Other than that, I was busy being a kid and doing other things. Not that I didn't write, because I certainly did write, and I dreamed of publishing, but I didn't understand how to go about getting something published. I still don't really understand publishing very well, but I believe I will get somewhere within the next year or two.

So it's been a long eighteen years, and sometimes I feel that I have very little to show for it. I remember my dad sometimes finding me reading or writing in my room, and exhorting me to play outside (at younger years), do some chores (a little older), or go out and get a job (in my teenage years and between semesters at university). It's kind of odd though, my dad always trying to instill on me this desire to be productive, yet not understanding that what I was doing was exactly that. At least, in my mind that's how it was and still is. I think reading, creating imaginary worlds, messing around on the computer, whether it's reading or writing, or watching YouTube videos, or playing video games, or blogging, are all a part of producing a literary human being, and it's the only way I know how to "be productive." So even though he might not have thought I was listening to him, I really was. I was just internalizing his messages, making them my own.

Unfortunately, I still lacked the knowledge and opportunities to publish and get paid for my work, and there were always distractions. So even though I was being "productive" it wasn't the kind of productivity that pays the rent.

I think if I ever have kids, I will try and encourage them to publish their work as early and as often as possible. Not too long ago I read about Christopher Paolini, who wrote Eragon. I remember thinking "why couldn't I have publishers and authors for parents?" Because even though I haven't read Eragon, and therefore cannot judge that it is not a work of genius, I suspect that many many kids are gifted in the same way, but never get the chance to get their work out into the world. There just aren't mechanisms designed to pluck meaningful writing out of the minds of the masses.