(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!
