I Read My Old Writing Today

'Fantastic Terrors' - Cooper, James Davis, Old Book Illustrations 2007-2025

There is a folder on my computer called “thoughts of a madman.” It has all the random scraps of early writing and self reflection I’d accumulated and had nowhere else to put: "‘tumblr unfollowing’; ‘am i happy’; ‘Something on communication. Really just a stream od (sic) consciousness though’.

The oldest file inside it is, predictably, ‘thoughts of a madman.’ It’s from 2013, written by an 17-year-old Alex before his first year at university. Clearly, Alex was not happy with his lack of imagination at this time:

Where is the child who dreamt of dragons fighting a fortified town, being defended by an elf, two dwarves and a man? Where is the boy who would happily spend his lunchtimes with friends making up scenarios centred on overpowering the already overpowered mechanical master (which according to Arik was too ridiculous to actually work, though I think he just wanted to be the leader).

Alex was upset that he couldn’t think of such groundbreaking ideas as elves and super sentai tropes anymore, and believed he had lost his imagination. Later, his mind drifted to his studies:

The question’ why?’ has overrun the response ‘why not?’ and now we must force works of joy down our throats to satisfy a faceless group of examiners, which turns what was pleasurable into monotonous and dreadful repetition of ‘this poem shows that’ or regurgitating all twenty-three thousand Greek names and their occupations.

Alex could not believe that, by choosing to study a subject at a university level, he would have to know the material very well - even if that meant learning lots of facts about characters in books like the Iliad.

Finally, Alex wondered if he was the problem; maybe he was just not like other boys after all:

Why is it that the likes of Virgil and Shakespeare are avoided by my contemporaries in favour of an endless drove of repetitive drum beats and unnecessary hand clapping? Maybe my view of such things is skewed slightly; I did used to go to sleep listening to Vivaldi as a baby, and at seven I would keep asking dad to play Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, just as I was reading far above my station at the same time.

Alex thought he was a very smart boy because he read books and didn’t listen to pop music. He proved this by using many big words in his rant to himself, which he thought made himself sound very philosophical.

In the end, 17-year-old Alex decided he knew what to do with his future. And what a future it was!

So I will write, regardless of quality. Write so that eventually, one day, one idea will take hold and blossom into a fantastic and irreverent story, so that once again ‘why not?’ can become my motto and a few words can echo down the ages, standing proudly next to the greats of old and new – a golden task…

Alex had decided to give himself a ‘golden task’, which he thought sounded very impressive. He would become a writer as good as Tolkien or Homer, and have his books on the shelf next to theirs. Then, he would live happily ever after.

Putting aside the powerful cringe that comes with reading your old work, it did give me a chance to reflect on my own evolution as a writer and my relationship with writing.

Younger me complained that he was losing the childish imagination of the playground or the woods. His choice of language immediately reminds me of the books he was reading at the time, and the voice the Victorian authors would give their characters. He was worried that his skills as an author would never live up to his dreams. He was worried that he would never see his name on the spine of a Penguin Classics paperback.

I think it mostly shows the mental state of that moment in time. University was replacing the fun of a hobby with the seriousness of analysis, fantasy was replaced by history. 17-year-old Alex was a little upset that he had not written anything new for a while, and he was wondering if he would ever write something worth reading.

It’s been 12 years since I wrote that in a moment of immature self-reflection. 12 years later, I am a creative writing teacher in the middle of writing my first novel. It may (but probably not) end up sitting next to those particular names, but I’m not doing it because I have anything to prove to myself anymore. I’m writing my stories because it’s what makes me happy. If my writing can entertain other people too, then that’s even better.

In my younger days the thought of imagination was spectacular. Being able to conjure anything out of nothing for the simple reason of entertainment was as astonishing as lucrative.

I think I’ve returned to this state of mind, fortunately. Stories are again fun to read and write and share with other people. Teenage Alex can focus on more important issues like relationships and instant ramen.

Even more fortunately, I’ve lost the tone of a teenager - demonstrable proof that my writing has improved with years of practice. And hopefully it’s slightly less pretentious too.