Progress

So over the past few days, I've been clearing up my jump drive so that I can use it as a backup for my documents. I was massively entertained to discover that, once I'd copied all of my jump drive over onto my computer, I had about 90% of the stories I'd ever written and saved as a text document.

In fact, I was so entertained that I decided to inflict the progress I've made over the last eight or nine years on my blog's casual passerby.

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In the beginning... (2003-2004)

I discovered writing around the same time I discovered Neopets. This is a snippet from the first story I ever wrote, which I called "In Another's Eyes" and attempted to submit online. It never saw the light of day, thank God. I was about 11-12 when I wrote this.

“I’ll be back in a few hours. You’ll be all right?”

“Don’t worry! Go on, now.”

I was a nervous young owner, leaving my little Zaffie behind. I was only going shopping, but I was leaving my only-just-grown Zafara home alone for the first time.

Actually, that wasn’t why I was worried.

Zaffie057, known as Zaffie by her friends (well, by me), had a tendency to jump up and down on furniture when excited. And when some eighty pounds of excitable Zafara land on breakable items such as glass tables and lamps, they usually shatter. Just this month our doctor had treated a broken bone, several burnt paws, and various cut and scrapes; I, in the meantime, bought replacement furniture and healing potions for Zaffie.

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August 2004

More Neopets stuff. This is actually the earliest-dated document on my hard drive, although I started writing "In Another's Eyes" earlier.

As you wander through a quiet park in Neopia Central, you spot a Christmas Zafara kneeling on the hard ground beside a bench, concentrating as though spellbound on the earth in front of her. Despite the fact that it is a mild autumn day, she is wearing a blouse and a pale blue skirt that falls below her knees. Curious, you walk over.

The Zafara is clenching a small grey stone in one hand; on the ground where she was just staring, several runes that you can not decipher are scratched in the dirt. Now she opens her palm and holds the stone out, flat in her palm, gazing at it intently, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth.

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July 2005

The untitled "sequel" to the unpublished first story. I never wrote more than a few pages of this.

“Ren…um, Ren…Wake up, it’s kinda important…”

“Merphgle. I wanna sleep late for a change. Go ’way, Ask.”

“Ren…” Asdsdkdklsadfh prodded me. “Ren, it’s serious.”

“You’re just mad I turned off the water again,” I grumbled, covering my head with a pillow.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s the middle of the night, and I’m up,” remarked Aludari from the doorway as he flicked on the light switch. I winced at the sudden bright light, and because Asdsdkdklsadfh had poked me harder, on a soft spot of my back.

“Oww. Don’t do that.” I’m never very awake late at night, especially when someone interrupts me from a good dream.

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February 2006

The last Neopets snippet. It's around this time that my writing goes from cringe-worthy to mildly embarrassing.

Crack, crack, crack. Drill after drill after drill. Sweat pouring down his neck and into his eyes. The burning sensation in his arms as the wooden sword jarred with another, again and again and again.

This was just how he liked things, a few hours of mindless whacking at other pets to let out the pent-up energy of another uninteresting day.

“And yer lesson’s up, lads!” The squawk rang out from the head of the room, breaking harshly into the endless rhythm of wood against wood, and the Academy students relaxed (a few ducking as their opponent realized it too late and swept a blow down at their head).

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January 2007

Just a random piece. This features Mai (see the 2009 explanation), but I'm not sure what the context is.

Today was a sticky sort of day. Mai hoped it would rain.

Long, dark hair hung limply down as she leaned out her large window, eyes on the crowd below. How she wished to be there…from all the way up here, she could see hardly more than a ton of dust kicked up from the hard-packed roads. Dust and sand seemed more appealing to her feet than the pointy-toed, uncomfortable shoes she was forced to wear.

She heard a strange coughing noise from her bed and turned. A large dog was lying there, his fur tawny-gold in the sunlight that drifted through the window, splotched with black.

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January 2008

This is from my Ridge universe. Ridge is a city where all the magical folk of New England gather: people with Talent, that is to say, mages; magical creatures; and the Nightstalkers, the criminals, unscrupulous, dangerously Talented, or unable to control their powers. I eventually gave the story up because it was full of whiny teenagers and bad paranormal romance/YA fantasy tropes. I still like the concept, though.

He should have known they’d be at the mall.

It was, after all, a Friday afternoon, and where else would three girls go when they wanted to hang out? He’d certainly passed a good dozen gaggles of teenagers on the way to his own shopping —

But somehow, Bane had a little trouble picturing his friends in the men’s department.

The three of them were whispering and giggling, heads together as they stood between the wall and a clothing rack; Bane recognized the close-cropped dark hair of one and the ice-blond waterfall of another. Mily and Aislin — so the plain-looking one in the stained T-shirt must be this new kid Ash had been going on about.

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January 2009

A favorite character, who I've portrayed as demon, demon-hunter, various types of shapeshifter or animal, and ordinary human girl over the course of the years. In this bit she's a werewolf.

Stars glittered in a deep navy sky, gleaming down on the crisp night below. Tilting my head back, I could see them clearly; but it was not the sky that illuminated the world down around me. A lone streetlamp guarded the broken pavement of the street I was walking, somehow still fed electricity though it was god-knows-how-old; a faint buzzing noise accompanied its flickering, and I could tell that as long as it had stood sentinel, its time was nearing an end. Passing it, I walked into the cool darkness of a rural night – though I knew this hadn’t been so empty, once.

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January 2010

From the transcript of the most awesome dream I've ever had. The writing's kind of icky, because I was trying to get the dream down before I forgot it.

Someone pounded on my door.

I froze, knowing instantly -- instinctively -- that this was something wrong. For some reason I'd been feeling all day that something bad was going to happen, and I knew in an instant that this was it.

Unwillingly, I rose from my seat at the kitchen table and entered the hallway. The pounding was cracking the wooden door, and I backed away, realizing that the person on the other side meant to break in. The door bulged, then broke with a loud crack. Hands gripped the remains and wrenched them aside.

It was an ordinary-looking man of extraordinary strength.

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January 2011

Another dream transcript. Ditto the blech writing.

I stared down the hill at the mysterious school. It was a sprawling monster, miles across and probably dozens of stories high -- and yet it was hidden, out here in the middle of nowhere. The mages had done an excellent job to hide their secret.

Alexandria slanted her gaze towards me. "Almost time," she said. I nodded absently.

I had first heard of the mages six years ago. I was twelve years old at the time, a baby; but I was a street kid and I should've had some common sense. Instead I showed my first signs of a hero complex.

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January 2012

A goofy little snippet I wrote when I stumbled across the phrase "Why are you injuring my horse?" It was one of those times where you wonder what situation on earth would call for that sentence.

Lucian whipped the bloody knife behind his back as soon as Kieran rounded the corner into the stall. The mare was black, but only a fool wouldn't realize she was injured; she had, after all, just let out a scream of pain and was refusing to put any weight on her left front leg. As her master entered she snapped at Lucian, who backed away hurriedly and only just missed losing his nose behind a click of large teeth.

"The hell, mage?" Kieran skidded to a halt. "Why were you injuring my horse?"

"I was not injuring your horse." Lucian didn't miss a beat.

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Now

Here's a piece of an assignment I wrote for my fiction class. I ditched it because it's rather hard to follow, but I still like the concept. It features the same character, Mai, as the 2009 bit, but this time she's a demon-hunter.

Daybreak and you slant your eyes at us. Morning and we must be gone by eleven; we’ve done our job; the town would reclaim its façade of normalcy. Do you think we swallowed the night whole? Noon; we stop for lunch; you smile red paint, unflattering apron tied tight as if you could pinch yourself into a model’s body. I see you staring at the streak in my hair, old-woman white, and I leave you an extra tip for more blond dye. Three o’clock; winter evening nearing. I greet you; not my brother, with his puppy face and gentle voice; I would not disconcert you with kindness.