In a way, I was “writing” stories when I was a kid. The only thing was, those stories were not being written down. I merely imagined them, and when I finished thinking about what would happen (the “plot points” as it were) and how the story should end, that was it. That particular story was finished for the time being and, as it happened, forever. I soon forgot it, because I was thinking about another story.

Now I can only remember the bare bones of two of these stories and the memories are pretty vague. Two of my friends and I pretended we were royalty. One of us was the Queen of France, and another was the Queen of England; I cannot remember whether the third reigned over Italy or Spain. As we were ruling different, far-flung countries, it is difficult to imagine why or how we happened to be together, having adventures–riding in coaches, being attacked by masked bandits, being rescued by handsome, aristocratic gentlemen, sometimes needing and being able to defend ourselves, etc.

I laid down rules about various aspects of these all-too-conventional adventure stories.

  • “It would look better if the horses pulling our coach were matched blacks, rather than some being black and some being brown.”
  • “If you want your dress to be satin and the color of limes, it might be better if you didn’t trim it with coral lace. Why? Those colors wouldn’t look good together.”
  • “If we all need to be rescued at the same time, we need to have more than one gentleman arrive to help us.”
  • “If you want to wear pearls, perhaps you should leave the diamonds for another tine.”

I don’t know where these ideas on fashion and action came from, although the last might have begun with the game of London Bridges where the individual who is caught must choose between a diamond necklace and a pearl pin.

I was a little older when I “wrote” the second story. I had really enjoyed my reader in the fourth grade. It was named Singing Wheels and dealt with pioneers and moving west. So I started a story about a wagon train which, I hasten to add, had nothing to do with the TV show, which I had not then or have ever seen. I developed characters and imagined situations. My main characters were not named good 18th or 19th century names like Elizabeth and Elijah; instead, they bore the extremely commonplace names of Bob and Mary, while their best friends (of a slightly lower class—probably not enough horses or something) were labeled Bill and Ann.

After awhile, my younger brother wanted to join the wagon train.

“Okay,” I said. “You can be in charge of Bill and Ann.” He didn’t particularly like these characters, especially as it wasn’t clear what being in charge of them meant, and he didn’t like the direction of the story I was narrating either.

“I don’t want Bill and Ann to have a baby,” he stated. “I don’t want to have to worry about a baby.”

“They have to have a baby,” I replied. “It’s in the story.”

That was it for him; he lost interest and it wasn’t long before I did too. Instead of planning how storms and hunger and sickness affected my little band as they moved westward, I spent my time designing quilts on spare pieces of paper and coloring the blocks with my crayons. The wagon train had ceased to roll.