The First Big One

In eighth grade, just after Thanksgiving, I made up my mind to do my Social Studies homework early. I sat down at my computer and wrote. It had the beginnings of a great novel. I produced a copy to my social studies teacher, complete with blood spatters. It was journal entry written by a female, disguised as a male, working as Captain Magellan's cabin boy, on that historic circling of the globe. I don't have the 400-word document I write originally, but I remember that the teenage girl shoots herself after the captain finds out. After all, he'd kill her anyhow in the end. Hence the blood spatters. I got an A+.

Now, even more inspired, I opened up the document filed under "Letters, Essays, and Projects." The story grew two pages long, then three. Finally I decided to start over and scratch the journal entries idea. I loved my story right from the first line. I couldn't stop writing! The story just kept developing on its own. I'd race home, plop down in front of the computer, and write for several hours. The words just kept coming, when I'd usually wiled away my time at school doodling. Now I spent it day dreaming what could happen next to Pacifa, the cabin boy. I wrote and wrote for weeks on end. Exasperated that it was midnight, and that I hadn't gotten to the good part yet, I was forced to dream what would happen to her next. My story consumed me, it was my hobby, it was my obsession. I lived and breathed it for three months until it was done. Those were probably the three happiest months of my life.

My story went through a lot with me. I can tell you, it ends with Magellan holding the dying Pacifa in his arms and confessing his love for her. He names the ocean he encounters, Pacific, after her, meaning calm and serene. When I look back at it now, I shudder at how badly things developed and just how much I clung to that story. It got me to the Young Authors Conference in Heidelberg in 8th grade, where I was bored out of my mind. I made a point in explaining to the woman who ran the event that it all seemed centered on third-grade writers. Pacifa, as I now called the story made me a writer, someone who could travel the world in freedom, and write about it, and get paid. I imagined me walking down dark alleyways of Istanbul, eating some of the local food, writing a poem of the smoggy beauty of the place. I wanted to travel through the desert with Bedouins, to learn about their way of life, and to pen articles about life's simple beauty. I wanted to work for the UN as a healthcare worker, and see the world through the eyes of a third-world child. Because now I was a writer, I would do it all. I remembered my story being so damn good, that I was looking up contests to send it to in the 2000 edition of Writers Market. Then again, it was the only piece I wrote, but I was so proud of it! Mrs. Traunsteiner, my 6th grade English teacher would look up at me with barely contained joy. "Elisabeth, you're gonna be a writer." She said it as if stating a fact, like it is going to rain today. Then she'd hug me. I once had a sub in Math, who was a romance novel writer. I asked her how she did it. She explained it to me. Only later did I realize Pacifa wouldn't be categorized as a romance novel. At 13,000 words, it was a rather short historical fiction novella.

Through the years, I kept banging out more work, stemming from Pacifa. Man, I wasn't a one-shot writer! Pacifa I edited and reedited, until I thought it was perfect. I sent it off to some writing website. I completely forgot about it until six months later I got an email saying that it was in first place for best novella. I was ecstatic. A week later, the entry was pegged down to fourth place. Long sigh. I then submitted it to Kiwibox, completely screwing up the submission process. Unfortunately, no one told me otherwise. Only later did I learn that Kiwibox keeps all rights to work submitted, even if it is rejected. And it was. At a certain MUN conference, two girls were locked in a room and reduced to tears watching Shakira's Whenever, Wherever over and over again whilst everyone else was at the dance. I had unwittingly left my bag in their room, with my folder of My Serene One as I called it now. I had planned on editing it that week, but I just didn't have the time. The two girls raided the candy that was in the bag. The Spaniard pulled out the story, and for lack of anything better to do, sat down and read it. Later, when they could rejoin the living, the two girls asked me who wrote it. I said I did. They couldn't believe it. One of them had started to cry reading it. "You're a writer," they said, "you're a decent writer." I couldn't have been given a higher compliment.

Today, after much wrangling, I once again own the rights to Pacifa, but I never intend to submit it anywhere. If I attempted to edit it, I'd lose the distinctive voice of "me" from four years ago. I can hardly believe it. Four years come Thanksgiving have I been a writer. And My Serene One got me there. My writing voice had been so timid, and so thoughtful. Now I use powerful words with a dark undercurrent, nothing like My Serene One. For now, I have it locked down. I still have a copy of the ring-bound version from 8th grade, along with the blue ribbon on the front cover. But it will stay there, in my memory box, as a reminder of where I come from, and what I wrote so long ago. My Serene One stills remains to be my favorite story that I've ever written, but I look back in melancholy as the last time I even opened the file for Pacifa was the 18th of May, 2002. And so it shall remain.

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