The first piece that I remember

The first piece that I remember writing, I must be around 7 years old and in year three. It was the first time that in Literacy class (that's the word used to describe English at that age) , that we had come across complex texts. Or as complex as they will be for someone that age.

We had to write a story of our free choice. At my first thought I was terrified. I had tried writing before when someone had given me a topic to write about. I had written a fictional story about rabbits and a nonfiction story about the different festivals celebrated by the different religions. But this time I was genuinely scared. I scored well in spelling and grammar and read widely. But it still petrified me.

We had been given some pointers on the board about our stories.

1.Stick to first person, second person or third person. Don’t change in between.

2. Don’t write about fictional characters

3.Don’t write about historical figures.

(I’m not sure if people knew the difference at that age)

4.Don’t write about people you know

5. Make sure that the story has a start, a middle and a finish.

This was a lot to take on for a 7-year-old. But it was the first time I was ever writing without any restrictions. And that scared me.

I sat there unable to think of anything whilst the others already had a head start. And I was supposed to be the academic and creative one.

As the hour ticked by, many of the others had already written a bit of a piece. Occasionally the teacher would come over and check and found that I had written very little. I was worried that I wouldn’t complete the task. Luckily it was given to us as homework.

At home It didn’t get any better. My parents asked if the homework was too difficult, and I lied. Literacy was one of my favourite subjects, so I just said that it was long. I had completed the other homework which was spelling and some sums.

Then I turned on the TV and saw a Scooby Doo cartoon. Or a cartoon movie I think it was . Scooby doo and the alien invaders. I then decided to do something no author should ever do. I plagiarised. In a way. I didn’t not break rules number 1, 3,4 and 5. I think I broke rule number 2. though. I didn’t write about any characters from Scooby Doo. But I did write about aliens encountering a group of children in the desert in the USA and the kids solving a mystery about the aliens. I’m not sure if I plagiarised or if I was simply inspired by it. I was seven.

I gave in the piece the next day and the teacher said that it was good and then school moved on.

This was genuinely probably the earliest piece I ever wrote on my own without direction. As I grew older, I realised that there is something called copyright and I realised that it is taken very seriously. But I was a child. So, for another four years I occasionally borrowed from other works. I stopped at age 11 when my Year Seven English teacher gave me and a couple of other children a lecture about plagiarism in detail. But that piece will be explored in another article here on Vocal.

This piece taught me a few things- a sense of accomplishment and confidence that I could structure my work.

Over time, my work went away from copying others for one main reason- I was not satisfied with the clichés that many other works of literature contained. Whether it be the presence of romance subplot or the story ending after the bad guy died, I found that it was too boring how many works existed. So, I made it my mission to have stories that are more for guys like me, and those whose plots and structures deviated from the norm.

Also, this piece showed me that I could paraphrase and make changes to stories- something that was later very helpful in higher education!