In Which I Judge My Own Writing Part I

Back when I was ten years old I started writing my first book called: Spy Academy and the Secret of Ethelbertha Harrison. As you can guess it took place at a school for spies and boy was it bad. I decided to reread the prologue and share some things with you guys. Because I remember rereading it a few years ago and finding it hilarious, so why keep that hilariousness to myself?

It starts with a terrible prologue set in the past. This girl named Ethelbertha goes to her secret room set in the school, where she is grabbed behind by an old enemy. This is the actual dialogue:

”You.”
”Yes, me. Tell me, where is it?!”
”Never!”
”Are you sure? Because if you don’t tell me, your life will be over soon!”
”Then you’ll never find out. I’m the only one who knows.”

And now the best part:

”That’s true. You know what. I’ll lock you up, in your own secret room in your secret room. There’s food storage, water and a toilet!”

Such a thoughtful villain. He’s even nicer than Voldy waiting for the school year to be over before he attacks Harry.

The prologue ends with him locking her up in the secret room within the secret room (10 year old me was a literary genius) and yelling ‘GOODBYE ETHELBERTHA HARRISON’

Fastforward to 2006 and one of the main characters called Zoey wakes up from a nightmare: ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH’. You know what she dreamed? You know what? SHE DREAMED THE PROLOGUE

This isn’t even a fantasy story, like why does she have ‘visions’.

And apparently it’s the fifth time she’s had that dream in a week. She’s told her friends about her dreams, and just by Zoey describing the clothes, her friend Reane could tell that her dream took place in the ’90s! Because Reane knows everything about history. ‘From dinosaurs until last year, there’s nothing she doesn’t know’ I highly doubt that

But the real mystery of the dream was the school.

‘Why didn’t she know which school it was?’ (because you know every school in the entire freakin’ country?) ‘Was it a secret? If that was the case, they had to investigate it! She and her friends loved secrets and spying’ (ah such great kids. There’s nothing wrong with that) ‘They wanted to become spies’

I mean when you’re sixteen that’s very realistic right? You can just phone secret services and be like ‘yo what’s up you got a job opening’

‘It started two years ago, she, Laila and Reane went to the same secondary school, started talking and realised they all loved to spy. A few months later Patricia moved to Arnhem (God knows why it took place in Arnhem (a city here in The Netherlands) when I’ve never even been there??) and befriended the three girls. They had solved many mysteries together (lol sure, Jan), maybe they could solve this one as well! It was just a dream, but still…’

End prologue

Me right now:

Ah yes I must investigate that dream I once had where a floating eye ball kidnapped me and one of my friends from elementary school.

So that was the prologue! I wrote ‘part I’ in the title of this post in case you guys are interested in hearing more? 😂 Believe me it gets so much worse. You think insta-love in YA is terrible? Wait until you hear my insta-love story in this.

How do you react when you read your old writing? Do you laugh? Cringe? Cry? I do all of this depending on how old the writing is. I mean, I wrote this when I was 10, so I find it adorable and hilarious. I cringe at my writing from when I was 13/14 though (and cry. Let’s not forget the crying).