The first time I was published

The more I read about published authors, the more I think I am a writing fraud.

I started thinking about this when I was reading Stephen King’s book On Writing (referenced in my last post) – he devotes the first part of the book to his CV – recounting tales of his youth and his early years as a writer that led him to being published. While his classmates were out having a smoke behind the gym or riding their BMX bikes, he was writing science fiction and suspense stories and submitting them to magazines – by the time he was 18 he already had a few pieces published and dozens of rejection slips.

I did not spend my teenager years in the pursuit of publication. While I was a dedicated student, my leisure time was spent in the same way as many other teenagers – hanging around in the city, going to movies, pretending to go to movies but instead hanging out in the city smoking Marlboro reds, giving my girlfriend Dana an undercut, talking about boys, talking to boys, and looking at pictures of boys in their high school yearbooks.  Playing netball, working in Mum and Dad’s newsagency, and reading featured somewhere in amongst all of that as well, but you can tell pretty quickly that writing stories and getting published were not high on my list of things to do.

A writing fraud through and through. Surely if I wanted to be a writer I would have been scribbling stories since I could first hold a pencil. Mulling this over, I felt slightly depressed for days. Until I remembered that I have, in fact, already been published.

Now, I’m not talking about The New Yorker here. Or even the The Courier Mail. But the Somerville House Yearbook circa 1991, 1992 and 1993.

In a fit of triumph at remembering that I, too, was a childhood writing genius, I dug out my old yearbooks with enthusiasm, flicking through the black and white typewritten pages, searching for my name in print. I was overcome by vivid memories of flowing, rhythmical poetry, and sharp, funny stories, things I hadn’t set eyes on in nearly 20 years.

On finding them, I could only hope that no one else has set eyes on them for the last 20 years either. My initial observation about my first published works is that my writing style 20 years ago was a little different to the romantic comedy that is my adult fiction of choice. My writing when I was 14 was verging more on depressed and suicidal than comedic.  In 1991 I had a short story and a poem selected – one titled “Death’s Memories” and the other “Memories”. I am not sure what memories I had developed in my short life that inspired these fine pieces of writing, nor had I experienced death other than that of my cat Pussy (my parents named her, don’t blame me) but haunting they are. Particularly the one that describes a desolate cupboard, and a dying, wilting rose.

In 1992 I progressed to writing poetry titled “View from the Inside” that was possibly even more tortured than my Memories series. The poem starts with “The world weighs on your drooping shoulders, cement blocks on your weary feet, constant overbearing pressure, to succeed, to win, to compete”. They shouldn’t have been publishing my work, they should have been sending me to the school guidance counsellor on red alert.

I did start to hit my stride when I was 16 though. Not only was I published but I won an award! The Magazine Essay Award, for an essay titled “Fame from the other side “, a topic I clearly had so much first hand experience with. It was printed on page 116 right before the report from the Chess team. Highly coveted by no one in particular, but the only award I received on completing Year 12 so one I have been quite fond of ever since. I was not successful in winning the Short Story prize though. So maybe I should be trying to become a journalist rather than a novelist.

Perhaps I am stretching it just a little to try and convince myself that I was a childhood writing genius. Well, maybe a lot. But reading back over my immature attempts at creative writing has given me the evidence that I clearly needed that perhaps this writing caper is not a passing whim. The third instalment in the Memories series could be on the cards after all.....