The Winding Road to Now : Part 1

My first piece of writing was a blatant ripoff of my sister.

I was in second grade, and we were assigned with writing a story. Having read my older sister's story from years earlier, I mimiced her plot in every way. I even copied her lame jokes (I remember one involving a man-eating bush and some girl saying, "The president ate my daddy?!" This was during the non-W's presidency.) I was called into the office and given a firm lecture on plagarism.

Not exactly a promising first start for an aspiring writer.

In fifth grade, we had another class project where we wrote a 'book', but this time they went all out, making us hardback covers for our stories and everything. I didn't copy off anyone else this time, though it was somewhat reminiscent of Indiana Jones, since it involved an adventurer exploring a pyramid. I recall making up my own language and then putting translations for the sidekick's lines in the back. Boy, that would've been annoying to read.

It was around this time that my sister started reading fantasy novels. Because we were army brats and she was near my age, I sort of idolized her, so clearly I had to start reading fantasy novels too. I tended to read anything with the word 'dragon' on the cover, because dragons were cool. I'm pretty sure most fantasy authors picked up on this trend in child reading habits, because 75% of fantasy books at the time had the word 'dragon' on the cover. Some even went all out and had a PICTURE of a dragon on the front, which of course made these books bestsellers.

I didn't really start writing until a copule of years later, though. Warcraft II was my subject of choice. It was one of the most popular video games of that time, and it came with a map editor so you could create your own levels. Being an aspiring programmer, I dove into this with gusto. But I wanted my maps to have plot, a story, characters, etc. Unfortunately, technology was limited at the time, and while you could name specific characters in your maps, you couldn't get them to talk.

So I opened up Word Perfect and started writing. I wrote the plot for a sprawling campaign that traversed about 30 maps. The player would read about a chapter's worth of prose, and then play the level associated with that chapter. This epic tale was called the Aramond Saga, and detailed the exploits of a militiaman embroiled in the war between orcs and humans that dominated the Warcraft world. Naturally, it had dragons. Also naturally, it ended up being around 100,000 words long. I have no idea how many people actually played it or read the text, but at that point I think I was just trying to prove to myself that I could create something worthwhile.

When Blizzard Entertainment (creators of Warcraft) announced their latest game, Starcraft, I couldn't wait to try it. Others couldn't either. When Blizzard repeatedly delayed the game and pushed back the release date, the Blizzard forums became filled with frothing geeks waiting impatiently for the chance to play the equivilent of 'orcs in space'. Someone jokingly said that the game was CLEARLY finished already, and Blizzard was just holding out to create publicity. This dissenter proposed that gamers create a (bumbling) black ops team with the mission of infiltrating the Blizzard stronghold and stealing the mystical 'Starcraft CD' so it could be copied and released to the world. This group was called Operation Can't Wait Any Longer (CWAL), and their adventures became amusing stories that passed the time while we all waited for the game to come out.

Naturally, I joined right in, along with dozens of other people. The stories were chaotic and amateur, but they were fun. Because I was the competitive sort, I obviously had to write the longest, most in-depth, most cinematic stories possible. I developed a reputation for putting way too much work into my writing. In the end, when Starcraft finally came out, I wrote the CWAL Finale, where we claimed responsibility for getting the game out to the world.

In the end, Blizzard was so amused by our antics that they thanked us in the game's credits, and named a cheat code after us (type 'Operation CWAL' into Starcraft and all your upgrades and units will be built instantly.) That was pretty cool, and showed me that when you put enough work into your writing, people took notice.

It was then, at around age 16, that I swore to myself that I would one day get published.