Memory Lane

I was going to blog about guns, and how they’re bad and how the recent events in Orlando were a tragedy, but I think we’ve already heard all of that before. I extend my deepest sympathies to anyone affected and truly do think it was a terrible thing, but my condolences aren’t going to help or add anything to this discussion. My monetary donation isn’t going to bring those people back to life, or stop killers thinking the way they think, and if I lived in the area then my blood wouldn’t be needed either due to the immense generosity of the human race having already met that quota. So that’s why I’m blogging about something completely different today. I just felt that I should acknowledge that.

***

I’m not sure what prompted me to do it. I was talking to a friend about a particularly awful old story I wrote on a website called Quizilla back in the day, and pure curiosity compelled me to try and dig it out of the Wayback Machine‘s archives. I didn’t hold much promise that my work would have been archived, and most of it wasn’t. But I found two things: 13 year old Kristian’s Quizilla profile, and Chapter 22 of New Recruit, my teenage vampire story.

That’s right. I wrote a teenage vampire story. And I’ll never live it down.

Rather than immortalise this monstrosity on the blog where I’m supposed to show off my writing talent, I will instead post two extracts here and point and laugh at them. The first will be a segment of my profile description, and the second will be a small extract from chapter 22 of the epic teenage masterpiece itself. But I’m not quite self-loathing enough to post the entire thing right here. So without further ado, here is a glimpse into the mind of a creatively rabid teenager from 2008:

I’m becoming a bit more popularz so it’s time to update my description. Yeah, I’m a guy. Plain and Simple. Believe it or Beat it. Age? 13. And I’m not a stalker or anything. Description: Ohh, I dunno. My profile pic is what I want to look like, I’m close to it. Green eyes, short brown hair. Nothing much else to know. Oh! I’m a MIDGET people! Webcam Show Schedule: HEY! Wrong guy, wrong website. OKAY?! Confession: I don’t update my journal much. I have a blog though: [REDACTED]. What else ya wanna know?

So at this point you may be wondering why I’m posting this here, and if I get a kick out of ridiculing myself. The truth is that I find this type of thing fascinating. It’s like that moment when you see a photo of yourself maybe four or five years ago, and realise that actually, yes, you do look like you’ve aged into the adult that society is convinced you’re supposed to be. Now, I always knew that I was a little… overzealous as a young teenager. But I don’t remember being this… sassy. Maybe this is only interesting to me – I hope not – but the passage of time and growth of the human mind has always been a keen point of fascination for me.

I’m not stalling, I promise.

Okay, maybe I’m stalling just a little.

Without further ado, I present to you an extract from chapter 22 of New Recruit. Jack Chimcholi (our sensibly named teenage vampire protagonist) is currently being introduced to the secret underground vampire city that lies below the town he lives in. His friend, Felix, is showing him to one of his favourite shops.

Felix then leads us to a shop which sells all sorts of anomolies which the human world couldn’t dream of. Sweets that make you tell the truth, Y-ray goggles that let you see all the things inside a body, V-goggles which shows you who’s a vampire.

“Woah. This shop have a name?” I ask Felix. I want to come back here later.

“Umm, ya stupid. Its called Berties Bizzare.”

“Berties Bizzare what?”

“Just Berties Bizzare. You don’t get it do you?”

“Whuh?”

“Bertie is an awful bizzare name for a vampire.”

“Oh. What the hell? Flying potion for 100 gold? That CAN’T be real!”

“Oh it is. It just has some nasty after-effects. Only for suicidals really. Here.” He says, taking a packet of the shelf and scanning it on a nearby computer. It comes up on hte screen, and he clicks an option saying “Show Dangerous After-Effects”. A video comes up.

It shows someone drinking the potion and smiling. He then flies up for 10 seconds and goes back down to the ground, holding the product and winking. He then blows up.

Felix tuts. “Death in 2 seconds.”

We walk on.

So it’s clear that I had a pretty nonsensical, overactive imagination. And let me assure you that whatever doubts I have about my writing, I can objectively say that I have come a long ways from writing this kind of trash. But the crazy part – and the reason I’m sharing this today – is that when I wrote this, I was fairly confident that I was ready to write a novel. In my mind, I knew that this wasn’t the best writing in the world and that a real novel would require more focus and attention to detail, but I was pretty sure that I was just about there. And to look back on this now, after 8 years more writing and having finished a Creative Writing degree, I can safely say that no, I was not ready to write a novel. I’m not even sure if I am now. The writing of a novel requires continued creativity, originality, editing, rewriting and an objective evaluation of one’s own work, along with much, much more. And when I do write a book, you can be sure that Jack Chimcholi, Reluctant Teenage Vampire will not be making an appearance.