Guest Post: The Story Behind My First Story #2

I'm still out on blogging break, but I do have a guest post for you today. Please welcome back Margaret Fortune. (You can read her previous guest posts on friendship here and landing a literary agent here.)

The very first stories I ever wrote were for elementary school. They would give us these worksheets that contained a picture, along with five lines to write a story about it. I would use all five lines and then start writing up the margins. The adults were always terribly impressed. (Well, you know how easily impressed adults are!) No doubt one of these was my actual first story. However, the first story I remember writing was “The Numbers’ Birthday Party.”

This story was different. I didn’t have a worksheet; I didn’t have a drawing. I just sat down at home one day and wrote it. It was a simple tale, about a little number called 0 who was sad because all the numbers were invited to 10’s birthday party except him. I was in first grade at the time, and I had no idea the kind of stir it would create.

Before I knew it, news of my story spread around the entire school. Not only did the school newspaper do a write up about it, but I had to go to the vice-principal’s office and read it to her. What’s more, my teacher made dittos of it and handed it out to the entire class. (Dittos are those frightening purple-ink copies, for anyone not old enough to have encountered one.) I remember sitting on a stool at the front of my class reading the story aloud while the whole class followed along. In a word, the whole thing was: Terrifying! Let’s just say I wasn’t cut out for the life of a famous author at that time.

While I continued to write stories for school assignments, it wasn’t until a slow semester at college that I really started writing short stories on my own again. It was then I rediscovered how much I loved to write, and have been writing ever since. However, I have yet to encounter the same attention as an adult that I did as a child. Perhaps that’s for the best; I wouldn’t want to put my writing career on hold for yet another twenty years while I got over all the fuss!

On an interesting side note, my original title for the story was “0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10.”  Pure literary genius, I know! However, the teacher apparently didn’t see it that way, as she changed it to “The Numbers’ Birthday Party.” Even in first grade, the “publisher” still changed my title. Well, that’s the publishing world for you! I guess some things never change.

Margaret's Bio:

I’m from Wisconsin, home of the six-month winter. With five foot snow banks and temperatures that could generously be termed as “frigid” for half the year, it is, needless to say, a good place to curl up on the couch and write. I have short stories published in magazines such as Nth Zine and Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine, and am currently being represented by Lindsay Ribar of Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. I also write customer service emails for a living, so who knows! If you’ve ever gotten a customer service email back from someone named Margaret…maybe that was me!


Thank you, Margaret. I'd love to read that story sometime *hint, hint*.

For readers: Do you have an anecdote or strong memory of trying to write your first story? I'd love to feature you on the blog. Contact me (see the sidebar) or share in the comments.

Guest Post: The Story Behind My First Story #1

When a reader picks up a book, they see the finished product, that's it. But every story has a lot more to it, and I don't just mean the parts taken out to streamline the novel.

Here to share the story behind his first story is writer Andre Ford.

In his own words: "I enjoy life in the southeastern portion of the United States where I write a number of short stories and articles. The short stories I write for science fiction are loosely based on personal experiences that are then shaped and molded by my wild imagination. I also enjoy writing for a website that focuses on aviation. Doing interviews with the various people that frequent the site, and interviews for a magazine, prompted me to interview people around the world, from many walks of life, about various subjects. These interviews are collected on two sites; Lounge 1506 and the 1506 Virtual Spotlight. The latter is devoted to the game development industry and mod development. In the end, whether it’s for my sites or for science fiction, I simply enjoy writing."

Check out Lounge 1506 where Andre conducts his interviews, also on Facebook.

And now, here's the behind-the-scenes look at Andre's first story:

The story about my first is short … like my first story which for some reason was titled “Out of Gas.” It was written a year or two after the attack on the World Trade Centers and gas prices has started to sky rocket. My wild imagination did what it does best and took that current scenario and stretched it out far into the future one that eventually turned the United States of America into a wasteland. A land created not by nuclear fire but by greed and stupidity.

Oil barons and politicians have worked together and have virtually made impossible for the masses to function and made it to where the few two percent of the society that were billionaires and millionaires could still enjoy life. These aristocrats moved off to France. Why? Well that’s where the dart landed and I went with it. So the extreme rich people were in enjoying the fruits of their greed in France and the rest of the nation was reduced to nothing except for the fact three factions rose from the ashes.

No thought went into these factions and I’m really ashamed to admit what I called them, but here we go. I had Pedestrians, Riders, and Drivers. Pedestrians are a tribal society because they walk everywhere. Riders are a step up; they’re cowboys that use horses to get around. Lastly the Drivers; you guessed it, they have cars and they’re most advanced society. Drivers used alternative fuels that have been outlawed which makes Drivers scum in the eyes of the aristocrats.

My characters, a group of kids, from Dodge City were to go on a convoy to resupply another city. Then of course along the way a bunch of things happen and they eventually learned to not fear the Riders or Pedestrians; they’ve always been told these two lower factions would kill them on sight and want not. A typical story really the main characters have a change of heart and they learn to cope with those around them. Eventually their experiences help them become better people and to grow.

What killed my first story was inexperience. Info dumps consumed a large portion of the story. The rest or the story didn’t show a lot of things and it reads like a sterile report about something. There were no emotions that you could connect with. In addition to being poorly formatted it was also too predictable. If you’re thinking …this sounds like Fallout mixed with Mad Max you’d be right to do so. The Mad Max movies and Fallout games (Fallout 1 and 2 at the time) did have a huge impact on my first story.

So that is the short, silly, and embarrassing story about my first story “Out of Gas.” I thank Clippership for letting me write about it because I can see now how far I have come since then and I hope you enjoyed reading it just as much as I enjoyed writing it.


Thank you for sharing, Andre! It's fascinating to see the other side of the writing process, the cutting room floor, or the "bloopers."

For readers: Do you have an anecdote or strong memory of trying to write your first story? I'd love to feature you on the blog. Contact me (see the sidebar) or share in the comments.