IWSG August: Gathering dust or rolling stone?

Today is the first Wednesday of the month, when the…

…founded by Alex J Cavanaugh, blog about their hopes, dreams and fears. If you want to join this merry band of writers Click here to add your name to the list…
The awesome co-hosts for this month are; Tamara Narayan, Tonja Drecker, Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor, Lauren @ Pensuasion, Stephen Tremp, and Julie Flanders!

I almost missed this month. It’s the kid’s summer holidays and I have trouble remembering what day it is, let alone the date! We’re just back from a few days camping and I’m still congratulating myself on choosing to come back a day early and missing a downpour by minutes (hurray! No wet tent to dry out!)

But back to this month’s question; What was your very first piece of writing as an aspiring writer? Where is it now? Collecting dust or has it been published?

Well, neither. When I first wrote it, in a creative writing class, it started out about ballroom dancing. I knew nothing about ballroom dancing but did a fair amount of research on the net about it. Then I had a moment of inspiration, realised that although I knew (a little more now than I had) about ballroom dancing, I knew quite a bit about karate (having practised it for several years – yeah, don’t mess guys ;)). Anyhow, writing about something I knew made it a much better story.

I submitted it for a competition. It got nowhere, I figured ‘ok, let’s move on’ and left it to gather dust.

A few years on I dug it out and took it to my writing group for comments. I had such a great reaction from them! They loved it, were howling with laughter in places and it generated a lot of discussion. I was still buzzing from this the next day and decided to tighten it up, remove the swearwords and send it round the women’s mags market.

No bites. It’s just not that sort of material. I read it out to another writing group recently and discovered that the removal of the swearwords had made it blander, or maybe it was a different audience. Either way, I didn’t get the same reaction.

So, I’ve rewritten it (again), merging the best of both versions and have sent it off to another competition. Its free to enter and I won’t hear anything for months, so I guess it’s back on the shelf for a while. If I don’t get any luck there I might just leave it and stick it in my own collection one day.

What about your first piece? Is it gathering dust or a rolling stone?