Thursday, December 11, 2008

Diagnostics

When I was little, I was always writing something - but starting when I was around ten or so, I spent an inordinate amount of time writing a novel called The Purple Cow. It was known in the family as "Jenny's bestseller" - "Where's Jenny?" "She's in her bedroom working on her bestseller."

(There was no ironic freight to the usage, but neither was there anything delusional - it was just always my life ambition to write a trashy novel a.k.a. bestseller, an ambition I have slightly reluctantly given up as I realize that I have missed the moment in life when I might have actually written my Upper Manhattan animal shapeshifter urban fantasy...)

I have just unearthed the box with the novel in it - it is in a green plastic binder, both the original manuscript and a partially typed version - I cannot resist scanning and posting the first page of the typed version. I am guessing it was drafted when I was ten or eleven and typed up a year or so later!

Hmmm, I cannot spare the time right now to do a further selection, though I have slightly mesmerized myself by looking at the middle stretch of pages and I do think I'll redact some of this stuff later on. The book is episodic rather than arc-like in structure, but the main central episode involves a book-writing competition that everyone gets involved in, with charts and calculations! I definitely recognize the person who now likes to make to-do lists and training schedules - really this was an utterly demented project...


NB I learned to type because we only had two cartridges for our TI-99/4A - Munchman and the Touch Typing Tutor!

5 comments:

  1. This has a hilarious number of numbers! "there were six people" sets the theme, with seven cars, five acres, $100,00 (from the labor union?), $100 a week, families of four, of six, three others . . . I'd say either you loved enumeration, or you'd been reading lots of young fiction that was surreptitiously trying to teach you math!

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  2. I know! I loved enumeration (and still do - the list is one of my favorite literary devices), and I loved math, but also it did not seem real to me unless I had a very precise idea about it! I have NO idea what I was thinking re: the Labor Union, BTW! PErhaps if I read further into the manuscript it will be illuminated...

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  3. The enumeration is tres CRIPPLED DETECTIVES!

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  4. The seven cars was the best moment for me, the way it's so casually tossed in there at the end. What fun!

    When I was that age I was attempting to write a novel that was like Agatha Christie with some Hardy Boys-style fisticuffs. It was nowhere near as sophisticated.

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  5. Good find!

    I dimly recall a long-ago news feature item on someone who did enter contests and had winnings that approximated full-time job earnings....

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