Because if he doesn’t, he gets no better than this.
I just dug out of my files a few pages of a novel I attempted to write when I was 18 years old (I’m 39 now). Titled Among the Meek, it’s horrible, putrid stuff, and I can’t take my eyes off it.
To give you a bit of the flavor, I’ll share the first paragraph:
The day hung heavy and grey. There was no visible sun to indicate the hour. The hills in the distance dotted the skyline. The green of the trees in the valley were blotted by the grey. It was the sort of day that emitted a foreboding of mediocrity. All that could be seen in the sky was grey.
So what I was attempting to say, if I’m reading this correctly in the hindsight of 21 years, is that it was gray. Excuse me, “grey.” (Apparently, I lapsed into an English lad in my late teens.)
Also, “foreboding of mediocrity” might be the most unintentionally hilarious line I’ll ever write.
The pages — there are nine of them, which is apparently as far as I could go — are heavily marked with notations in my handwriting, so I do take some retroactive heart that I knew this wasn’t very good. That’s a start, right?
Craig Lancaster | A Mind Adrift in the West 
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
October 23, 2009 at 7:51 pm
kristentsetsi
I’m going to repost my comment here. It bugs me when people comment on facebook instead of on my blog. It’s nicer to see a number before “comments” at the end of a blog post.
The resposted post:
Ha! I went through a “grey” (vs. “gray”) period, too. I just liked the spelling better.
My favorite is “The hills in the distance dotted the skyline.” Them’s some pokey hills!
October 23, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Lancaster
Thanks, Kristen. The I’m-so-stupid-I-should-have-put-this-on-the-blog moment came about a half-second after I published the Facebook note.
October 28, 2009 at 10:13 am
Maryann Miller
There is a reason we keep some of the old stuff. So we can read it and say, “Thank God, I’ve gotten better at the craft.”
You could keep that awful line posted above your monitor as a constant reminder.
October 29, 2009 at 1:57 am
craiglancaster
Right you are, Maryann.
I think having that line in front of my eyes would be redundant. It’s burned — quite painfully, I might add — onto my brain.
November 1, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Daun Jacobsen
I knew there was a reason I kept them all 🙂
Congrats on your book, and thank you for coming to visit our class last week (M. Bell). I appreciated very much what you had to share.
November 1, 2009 at 9:50 pm
craiglancaster
Thank you, Daun. Tell Molly to bring me back. It was a blast.