"Cimorene hated it."

[kiki_eng]

readbystarlight prompted me Hmmm...going back to your first fandom roots?, or, at any rate, I chose to interpret that as a prompt, and, oh am I going back to my roots. The Enchanted Forest Chronicles were my Larry Stylinson. They were my Twilight; Patricia C. Wrede had invented wizards and I was going to be a witch when I grew up. Okay, so, I knew that I wasn't going to be a witch when I grew up and I also had a sensible occupation picked out, but there was a time that I lived in these books and it was this amazingly intense experience, that I thankfully mostly kept to myself because I was already a weird kid.

I remember writing a story in this pink spiral bound notebook. I remember my letters on those pages and it was this thing heavily inspired by those books, especially the descriptions of the Caves of Fire and Night and her approach to fairy tales; I think a goblin ate a princess after, like, three pages of landscape description.

That whole phase is my earliest memory of being a fan and expressing that creatively. I had shipped things earlier, but I had never been that engaged with a canon before, and I'm not sure that I have been since, either. I think I've lost that kind of rawness that lets you tumble so hard for something like that. I'm okay with that.

I still remember that tumble, though, I remember reading that first page of my library book, and by the time I got to the end of that second paragraph I was gone. My fannish roots are in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Every once in a while I'll pick up one of the books - usually Dealing with Dragons - and read it; it's like coming home.

Comments

[glitteryv]

Aww, what a sweet memory!

I don't remember writing anything until 10th grade or so? I was very much into writing horror/creepy stuff. Eventually, I got into writing RPF (though I was totally unaware of it being called that since I wasn't even in Fandom yet). The bulk of the stories (from what I can remember since I've lost them) were about me hanging out with musicians and going on G-rated adventures with them. It seems that I was destined to be in Bandom. LOL

[kiki_eng]

:) I feel that is not a bad destiny.

[runpunkrun]

What a lovely story about books and fannishness. :)

[kiki_eng]

:) Thanks.