Sometimes you find old works in unexpected ways...

Recently, I lost all of my data on my hard drive, due to a virus which I couldn't contend with, seeing as the program ate up my CPU's capacity entirely.

I decided to reformat my hard drive an reinstall windows, even though that meant losing all of my files.

Granted, had I been wise enough to make a restore point on this laptop beforehand, this wouldn't have been my only option, but oh well, it's too late for regrets.

A few days after this, I met an old friend from middle school on my way home on a bus.

I hadn't seen him in, at least 10 years, since we didn't go to the same high school.

He gave me an old 512MB flash drive, which contained a lot of files I forgot existed, related to a few projects I undertook with my classmates in middle school.

Among those files, was the first story I ever wrote to completion.

It's a very, very imperfect story, having more plot holes than a block of Swiss cheese with extra holes drilled in it, but it has some nostalgic value to me, seeing as many of the characters were loosely based on my friends and classmates from homeroom in 7th and 8th grade.

Of course, looking at my work now, it's almost embarrassing, because I can barely understand what's happening. I apparently didn't know the proper meaning of the phrases 'character development' or 'plot devices' back then, or even 'continuity', because a lot of major events had no consequences.

Anyway, shitty history lessons about my shitty writing career aside, here is a link to the file:

Terror Begets Despair

These links only stay for a short time, so if it's broken, let me know and I'll update it.

I think this is pretty incredible, honestly speaking, though I did have to paste it into Word to make it better on the eyes.

Forget the fact that it isn't professional, you wrote this when you were 14-15. I don't know how old you are now, but that's a decade ago for me. I have an intensive collection of my personal records including stories I've written when I was about how old you were when you wrote this. Certainly, they were more simplistic, but they also had contained within them a life I fear I lost growing up. I mean, take a look at yours, there is a lot of life in these characters and situations, a lot of action, so much epicness is going on and that says something about you, who you were when you wrote this, what you were interested in and what you wanted to write about.

People often get timid and embarrassed when they look at older material they worked on, but I think those feelings are folly. We grow up and change all the time, and even if embarrassment is an encouragement to keep changing, there is still value in what helped make us who we are today.

So yeah, I feel that all things considered, this is a pretty awesome story and work for the you who wrote it then, and even is pretty decent now. I mean, it could be littered with errors and typos, but at least you had the courtesy to spell-check.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

I apologize for the sloppy formatting, all I had back then was notepad, so I had to guess at how long my paragraphs should have been.

My writing style has vastly improved since then, though it has also drastically changed in the process.

The writing style I use on these forums is actually specific to these forums.

I don't write using this style anywhere else.

I do so because it's fairly easy to read, but mostly because it prevents people I don't want finding out about my participation on an adult site from doing so.

It'd be extremely hard to tell who I am in real life, even if you've memorized my writing style to a T, just by the writing style I display on these forums.

Back into the story, I started it at the age of 12, near the end of 6th grade, and it took me nearly 2 years to finish it.

I was 14 and in 8th grade, in summer school, when I finished it, and gave a copy to each of my friends at the time.

Only one of my old middle school friends saved it for these last 9 years, and gave it back to me recently.

On the matter of my story's quality: I guess you're right, it may be pretty good for the age I wrote it at, but I think my critical feelings toward it are also justified.

I remember that, until my sophomore year of high school, I never really cared about planning my stories out, and wrote whatever popped into my head.

I feel that doing this is bad for keeping a story consistent, keeping events clear, and making sure that there aren't contradictions within the story.

This story was no exception.

But, despite that, I somehow came up with story that matched my interests at the time, and stuck with it until I finished it.

Lately, I've been in a slump for writing, and have mainly been writing extremely short stories, such as 1-2 page long realistic fictions, which have been thought-inducing at some points, but overall they're creatively uninspired.

I pose this question: Should I attempt to re-write the story, including the improvements in storytelling I learned throughout the years?

If so, I would make it exclusively for this site's writing and fan fiction section.

P.S. Thank you for your compliments to my story, I know I'm harsh on myself, but I do enjoy praise as well. ^_^

I think only you and your motivation can properly serve you in this regard. Otherwise, I can assure you that if you decide to do so, it can only help your writing techniques. Even if nothing serious comes from it, it will be a nice writing exercise for you.

I'll be looking forward to seeing whatever you decide.

Okay, thanks for that. Also! I've decided to start a community project, hopefully it will help me get out of my writing slump. I'd like it if you could be a part of it. ^_^