Recently, I've been reading a lot of authors who have cited role-playing (RP) games as a key inspiration in their development. I've mentioned my childhood love of Fighting Fantasy before, and online Multi-User Dimentions (MUDs - another word for online RP games) certainly whet my appetite for character development and dialogue.
I was pretty hooked on MUDs from about the age of fourteen to seventeen, most notably one called Realms of Aurealis, using a Pueblo client.
The ROA website often posted short bios where players would write the backstory for their characters. One day, a friend asked me (in character) about my own story, so I decided to write one. A few pages soon turned into a few dozen pages, and I ended up writing over 50,000 words - my first novella.
It was a bit long for the website, but I shared it amongst RPing friends and with family. It was riddled with the common mistakes of fresh writers: littered with ellipses, aching with adverbs, homonymically humiliating. But it was a story.
I recently decided to dig it up. I've mentioned before about the way my backlist makes me feel, and most of that was written about six years ago. This was written over sixteen years ago! I ummed and aahed about putting it online for quite some time. In the end, I thought - ah, sod it.
So, here's a little insight into the mind of a sixteen-year-old wanna-be author, well before she knew she wanted to be an author. A bookish, geeky, slightly mad teen who loved make-believe.
And no, I don't think I ever want to talk about it.
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