I was doing some rearranging the other day – not cleaning, not decluttering – just rearranging of the stuff, and I found an old binder that had writing pieces I did when I was a kid. Now these are not the first things I ever wrote, I’m sure, but they are the oldest things I have in this apartment.
To highlight just a few — an autobiography I wrote in 2nd grade, a small booklet written in French about Ma Famille in 3rd grade, a how-to paper about loading a program onto a TANDY computer, and one of my favorites – a small descriptive piece about Main Street in Walt Disney World from 1990 (I was 14 years old!).
MAIN STREET IN WALT DISNEY WORLD
As I walk through the gates at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World and step onto Main Street, I see the glorious blue towers of Cinderella Castle at the end of Main Street.
I get the feeling that I’m in a small nineteenth-century town. I see the horse-drawn carts taking people to the castle. I see shops such as the Drug Emporium, the Penny Arcade, and a Candy and Ice Cream Shoppe. At the end of Main Street I can see six different paths leading to different lands of the Magic Kingdom.
All of the people shopping, eating, riding, walking, looking, and taking pictures are smiling and enjoying themselves.
I think Main Street in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom is a fun and exciting place to be.
Let me first say, I still love Main Street and seeing the Castle for the first time each trip always brings tears to my eyes — so the love of Disney, Magic Kingdom, and Main Street haven’t changed. Luckily, my writing style has improved somewhat. HA
As I was re-typing that piece I kept wanting to edit and fix and change (I didn’t) – especially redundant phrases – and I wanted to change up the pacing, the sentence structure, and give more details — like what about the smells coming from the bakery and the popcorn carts? What about the sounds of kids who are already crying? What does the shadows look like on the ground as the sun goes through the massive amounts of balloons being sold? What does the park smell like after it rains? Or after the horses have gone by during a parade and left their fun…uhm, deposits?
Writers have you ever looked back on your old writing? What has changed for you? What has stayed the same?
For me, the things that are still the same when I write are not knowing where to cut off for paragraphs and using way too many examples and action words (shopping, eating, riding, walking, looking — okay, we get it!).
Readers…was this a fun peek into the child-like mind of Jennifer? I try to stay in this mode, or a little older, when I’m writing my characters – what would a young adult see when they’re standing on Main Street or writing about it later and telling someone else? I try to keep this wonder in all things honestly, but especially when writing my Young Adult coming of age novels.