First Book Attempt

I have been making up stories to entertain myself for as long as I can remember.  I wrote my first story around age 11.  However, my first attempt at a book had nothing to do with telling a story.  It was more of a hygiene and beauty guide that I hobbled together for myself.

I was an unpopular kid.  I was scorned by my peers for my red hair, freckles, doing well in class (teacher's pet), and my socioeconomic situation.  I never fit in because I never really understood how to fit in.  So around the time I was 12 I decided that if I just did the research on how to be poised and beautiful then everything would change. Of course, this was no My Fair Lady silver screen dream.

I checked out books from the school library about how to "do" the beauty thing (these books were from the 19050's - 60's as our library wasn't well funded).  I started with basic hygiene, grooming, and poise (posture, walking in heels, manners) and compiled the information from all the sources into a few paragraphs and a daily, weekly, monthly schedule that I felt was workable for me or the average person.

From there I moved to the basics of makeup and fragrance.  Unfortunately makeup was not allowed for me at that time.  I wanted to know the basics when the time came that I could.  I had a very sweet perfume (honeysuckle I think?) that my grandmother had given me at Christmas. The books said a lady would dab it on the wrists and on the neck behind the ears.

I wrote this self-help hygiene and beauty guide not only to try to level up to fit in, to try to make my peers forget the things they held against me, but to have something that I had control over.  I had no control of the abusive home I lived in  I had no control over rather my peers at school attacked me.  I could gather and coalesce information and ideas to improve myself.  I could try to improve myself despite all that was against me.



While the general plan to make myself palatable to my peers failed, I learned from the experience. First, I learned that you can learning amazing things through research - libraries are awesome for that.  I also learned that by gathering ideas and bits of information together, I created something new.  Put enough ideas, thoughts, imaginings, daydreams together and fiction is born.  Something new.  Something entertaining and amusing.  It was something that I could absolutely control.  It was exactly what I needed to survive through the darkest times.  Even today while I'm in much better conditions, I still need this - the act of creation - that is wholly in my control.