It was sometime during 5th grade when I first started writing. I had to read a book for school. I don’t remember the book, but I remember being annoyed by it and thought “I could write a book way better than this.” See, back when I was younger, I was quite egotistic, and that ego sprouted my desire to write. At the time, I was obsessed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so the first thing I wrote was fanfiction for the series. I created a new character that joins the gang and they would go off on daring adventures. The funny thing though is that I never completed any of these stories or gone beyond one page.
In grade 6, I got exposed to the Resistance video game series, and I wrote fanfiction for it. This time I actually completed these stories, and they ranged from 10 to 30 pages. These stories were quite cheesy, but at the time they were mind-blowing. I daydreamed a lot during class, and those daydreams were about my stories and what I imagined would happen next in the plot.
6th grade was an important time for me as a writer because that was when I first created a completely original story – two in fact. The one that consumed the most of my time was a zombie apocalypse story that was inspired by the Nazi Zombie mode in Call of Duty World at War. This was the first story I wrote that went beyond 100 pages, which was huge for me at the time. This was also the first story that had blood/gore, swearing, and intense violence – and I was still in my pre-teens then!
Grade 8 was another turning point for my writing. I was obsessed with the campaign of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. I first wrote a military story that focused on a group of American special forces soldiers, and it followed a similar structure to the video game. After 40 pages, I stopped writing it and I got invested in another story. A friend and I spent a lot of time talking about potential sequel ideas to Modern Warfare 2, and I came up with an idea where most of the enemy soldiers were juggernauts (soldiers in extremely thick combat armor). I ended up writing the story, which was my fanfiction sequel to Modern Warfare 2, and it ended up being 60 pages. A few months later, I began to write a string of sequels, and this became my first substantial series (second if I count my Resistance fanfiction stories).
Throughout the years leading up to today, I have continued to write whenever I had the chance. I have grown as writer since grade 5. My stories have gotten less cheesy and nonsensical, and more sophisticated and somewhat mature. My recently published book The Invasion of Planet Earth is actually a redo/spinoff of a story I wrote back in grade 6, which was my very first original work. The original version was very funny in The Room sort of way and it had some nonsensical plotlines, though most of my stories back then were like that. The published version is far more refined and better written, and it focused on normal people who don’t have the ability to change the outcome of the alien invasion. (The book is currently on sale on Kobo for $1 off until December 4!)
I hope you enjoyed my first blog post and will join me on my journey to bringing you stories that have twists, explosions, and death.
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