Horror-FAIL Friday: My Old Writing Part 5

To be honest, it makes me sad when I come across this stuff and read it. This one notebook though…it’s kind of ripe with terrible writing. The first several pages were devoted to my terrible cat-pire story that took up the last four episodes of “My OLD Writing”. Today, we’ll be refocusing on another story; R.E.M.: a story about a photography school in with a really obnoxious female protagonist (with ANOTHER L name), her gender-confused sidekick from Metroid, and the flirty professor she decided to annoy to death her affections. I wrote this directly after I gave up on the cat-pire book. While my spelling isn’t nearly as atrocious as it was in the first one, there are a number of instances where logic doesn’t appear to be on my side. Oddly enough, this story centering around a photography school immediately draws comparisons to Square Enix’s “Life Is Strange”. Believe me…this story is very, very strange.

For your entertainment, I’ve added my comments in brackets. That way, you’ll see everything I’m thinking as I read over this with fresh eyes nearly 12 years after writing it. Let the terrible begin…

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Horror-FAIL Friday: My OLD Writing Part 4

Yes, yes! You’ve been looking forward to this all week, haven’t you? We return once again to the awful cat vampire love story drama that I tried to craft when I was in grade school. Being that I wrote this when I was about 14 in 2002, had no social life, and spent all of my time inside writing, it’s bound to be bad. This was also at a time when I had crazy curly hair that could not be tamed and gigantic glasses, which weren’t in style then (but are now for some reason…). There are still times I look back on this story and wonder how the hell I managed to write something so incredibly terrible. The realization is that I didn’t know it was terrible then. I thought it was better than the things I’d written when I was younger (and it was, somehow…). Moral of the story is that hindsight is a bitch, but it also can make you feel better about where you are now and remind you of all you’ve learned.

But I’m preaching. I’ll bring you up to speed on where we now stand in our “cat-pire” story.

Horror-FAIL Friday: My OLD Writing Part 3

Welcome to part 3 of the worst vampire story you’ve ever read. That’s right, I’ve been going through some of my old grammar school writing and sharing with you the nitty-gritty, the kind of writing that should be kept in a filing cabinet with a lock chained around it in a dark basement somewhere. Alas, for humor’s sake, it’s been let into the light and now we’ll examine it for the travesty that it is.

As this is a continuing series, I’ll fill you in on what’s happened so far: absolutely nothing. Well, so far we’ve been introduced to a coven of “glam-pires” that can turn into cats at will, desire rainwater as their main delicacy (besides the occasional chicken dipper platter or tuna noodle casserole). There’s Leeta, our protagonist, the wallflower who thinks herself above the others, Sylvia, the wise hippie who likes to go walk in the woods, Milo, the “too nice” ex-cop, Seth, the daredevil who randomly rides his motorcycle around the block at “100 mph every night”, Melanie, the “typical street girl” with her blue hair, Donald Duck swearing shirt, and leather pants (snigger) and Reed, the depressing pianist who can’t cook to save his life (well, he’s dead so I suppose that doesn’t matter). Leeta and Reed hit it off at the very end of the last episode before Melanie dragged her out to a club for drinks (more rainwater I presume?). Let’s follow them and see what other mishaps our heroes will get into…

Horror-FAIL Friday: My OLD Writing Pt.1

There comes a point in every writer’s career when they go back and look at old material. I’m not speaking of stories put away in drawers to reflect on. No. I’m talking about the early stuff. What some might call “embarrassing” writing. It’s the stories that we wrote when we were in school and had little to no concept of how life really was or would be. It’s the kind of writing you look back on and laugh at and think, “Wow. I’m so glad I’ve learned so much since then.” Well, folks, I’m about to dive into that dark and dangerous filing cabinet and select a story that I haven’t looked at in quite some time…

My Horror-FAIL Friday blog is admittedly a petty and often critical blog. While it’s funny to look at examples of horror that can be written better or has been created for the sole premise of jump-scaring and shocking the reader, I always feel a little ashamed at myself for poking and laughing at them. Everyone deserves a chance to improve upon their work, especially those who are legitimately trying to produce something quality. And so that’s why I’m pulling a masochistic move and sharing some of my early writing…my awful writing with you.