This may be one of the hardest posts I've ever had to write *tear falls*
Okay, not really. But, it is one that's pretty embarrassing. At least in retrospect.
Everyone has something that they prefer not to talk about or at least have mixed feelings over. For an author, it's often some of their first, worst (or both) stories. For me, it's this:
Beautiful cover (done by my very talented photographer mother) for a very...story.
This story is not quite the bane of my existence, but it's fairly close. A lot of people I knew liked it - but I have the strange sense it's because they know that
I wrote it at
14. If you are one of the people who genuinely enjoyed it, know that I love you very much. But, I cannot say it's without its faults. At all. Or that it's original. At all.
Let's just say I don't have my little author daydreams about the characters from it anymore.
I will now enter into the prose of a very disturbed teenaged girl. Excuse me if it seems less poetic than it should be:
Once Upon a Time, I was 14 years old. I loved disaster movies and my hormones were beginning to explode. We went to Alaska that year, and while we sailed through the inside passage (a place filled with islands and trees) my cousin and I half joked as we fantasized about being trapped with hot actors on the Alaskan islands that surrounded us.
"I would choose Taylor Lautner," one of us said. "He wouldn't know how to survive, but we could at least hug each other until we died."
What does this have to do with Renegade? You'll see.
I was a very imaginative woman-child. I always had this fancy little daydream about traveling in the wilderness with some rugged, mysterious guy. I think I was watching a little too much Twilight at the time (never read the books, so you can't call me a Twi-hard). I honestly don't know where it came from...except hormones. I can hardly remember all of my inspiration. I just know I'm ashamed to associate myself with it.
Anyway, later that year all of my girlish dreams collected and manifested themselves into some sort of artificial testosterone. It was like my girly daydreams manifested themselves into an explosive gunfight with secret agents and I don't even know what else.
I came up with this exciting novel idea. I thought it was DA-bomb-dot-com. A girl is really the daughter of a futuristic secret agent and is randomly sent to live with people that she doesn't know. Like the typical teen novel, she's sent to the middle of nowhere in Oregon. She goes through an "I-hate-my-dad" phase for 5 pages, then she and her new BFF sneak across the state to go to a masquerade.
Yeah, I know, it always has to have a masquerade scene. (I was obsessed with Phantom of the Opera...still might be).
Before they carry out their plan she goes to this teen bonfire and meets this mysterious sexy ultra fabulous dude that she feels she knows even though he doesn't say two words to her. He gives her a smoldering look. I think she faints or something. It turns out that he's a secret agent who's been tasked by her father to pretty much stalk her for the last ten years or so as "protection" (and somehow I thought that would be romantic). For some reason, her Dad realizes that his daughter will rebel and go to this dance, so he tells the secret agent to follow her there and slip some drugs into her drink, kidnap her, then to blow the dance hall up. Little does dear old Dad know that Zane (secret agent) will do all of these things, but he is working with the bad guys.
(The "blow it up" part was in the original draft. Then I realized how absurd that was, so I decided that the "bad guys made him do it." Still, he blew the friggin' place up).
So they go to the ball and he's there and she's there and they're all like "LA LA LA let's dance!" and have a little assassin party. He takes her onto the balcony and does the creepy drug-in-the-drink thing and then decides that he will scale the wall with the unconscious girl to get out of the place in order to be more dramatic. He drives away as the place explodes, and then the two of them are launched into the middle of this really redundant wilderness journey toward the bad guy's lair. (Why it had to take place through the wilderness instead of by...say...car; I have yet to understand). Though, there is a predictable change of heart when Mr. Mysterious and Sarah (the one-dimensional Mary Sue) fall in love and they decide to simply walk the other direction.
And I'm not making this up. When he decides not to be a bad guy anymore, they actually start walking in the other direction.
And once again, I still thought this was all very romantic. Thank God I have sense now thanks to Jesus, Austen, and the Brontë Sisters.
As I wrote it, I made my Dad read it. My
Dad. I wanted someone, anyone to think it was good. The expressions on his face read a mixture of pride and confusion as he read it. I made pretty much everyone I knew read it. I thank many of them for softening the blow, and I'm grateful that many of them never actually got around to reading it.
I know that I am my absolute worst critic. There are a lot of people who had very kind words to say about this story. And, without it I don't think I would have found the strength to improve myself so much (or that I would have even
known to improve myself). I probably wouldn't have written Midnight's Song. But, still, this book was pretty...bad. It wasn't original, it had many many many plot holes (that were not even smoothed over in a believable way). Not to mention that I had very little knowledge of characterization or...grammar.
There was also a part where Zane led Sarah through this tunnel, grabbing her hand and using his other to guide them by torchlight. When my friends read it, they said the only thing missing was a horse. (If you're a Phan, you know exactly what I'm talking about). Oh yeah, and at the end of the tunnel, she faints. *SO DRAMATIC*
I thought the word "fumble" was "thumble." That was the word I used in the story. I thought that the biggest cliff hanger ever would be making somebody get pregnant. I mean, there were some interesting themes, technologies, and situations that I explored - but it was thrown together by someone that I don't even think was really myself (even though it was). IT WASN'T ME, I TELL YOU, IT WAS MY EVIL TWIN! (Because every good story has to have one, right?)
Monica, my literary confidant, was one of the first people to read the finished product. Of course there were things she might have liked...but she really didn't say much about it. I knew that must not have been a good sign, but I didn't figure that out until months later. When I gave her Midnight's Song, she admitted to me..."Yeah, your writing has really improved a lot." And, the great part is that it made her giddy : )
I will say that one of the greatest compliments I've ever received about Renegade was from a friend at church who read it and actually enjoyed it. If I remember correctly it was: "I loved it so much, it was like Avatar and Phantom of the Opera
combined!" So, maybe there really was something there. Regardless, I've improved a lot since then. I think that by being open about the things that are not-so-good, I can be better at the things that really are :) So there is my confession. Hope it made you laugh at least a little bit.
