CrazyJohn: On Writing II
Coincidentally, my second attempt at writing was in middle school (hint: this is not a coincidence. I don't know why I started that way). For an assignment, I wrote an entire medieval jousting tournament, chalk full of (what I thought was) suspense. Okay, the tournament itself was lame (but I did have some pretty sweet names for the combatants), but I also included commercials. Yes, commercials. I spoofed lawyer commercials, and infomercials, and car commercials... some of my best, young stuff was done in those commercials. And I remember Mrs. McCullough (of all people) just absolutely loved the commercials. That's just how awesome I am... I guess.
Later on in the first chapter, King talks about how his brother started a newspaper called "Dave's Rag" which King describes as a combination of family newsletter and small-town bi-weekly. *FLASH* I'm in high school... and I got a program on my very first computer that could make little newsletters. So I started one: Pimpin' Daily, it was called (PD for short). This was during my heavy rap phase (which some youngsters at Coldstone thought was SOOO funny that I had in high school), so Pimpin' Daily seemed like a fun name for it. I would write little fake stories about teachers or my friends (think 'The Onion' but with less humor and more swearing... high schoolers love to swear), and then I would print it off and bring it in to school to show my friends at lunch. I only made about a dozen total and, by the end, I had renamed it because it wasn't as frequent as a "Daily" (it was then called "Pimpin' Monthly Sentinel", or PMS for short). I remember how happy it made me when my friends would read it at lunch and laugh. King later describes a satrical paper he wrote in high school called The Village Vomit. And, good Lord if the similarites aren't striking.