Scribble Ninjas

Okay, I get it, let me think, I guess it’s my turn (quoted from Nicki Minaj). I suppose I should begin by saying that I am no writer. As a kid, I loved to read. Whether it was a small car ride or a long meeting my parents dragged me along too, I had either a book or a Game Boy Advance in my hands.

Despite my love of reading as a child (which has diminished due to circumstances), I do not believe I had ever wanted to become a writer. I am very fickle in my ambitions in life. Since the fourth grade, I’ve wanted to become a rock star (oh the naivety), an aerospace engineer (fancy term for an astronaut), an environment engineer (I believed in animal rights for quite a while and even became a short-termed vegetarian and a long-termed pescaterian), a scientist (I took chemistry AP…terrible decision) and numerous other careers options I cannot remember. However, I can never see myself as a writer due to a lack of patience, determination and confidence about my writing. Right now, my goal is to become a designer of some sort.

Despite never seeing writing as a path in my life, I did write decently for a child my age during elementary school. One day, while digging through my old assignments from elementary school, I stumbled upon a folder filled with printed stories I had typed during English class from my elementary years. I read through them, not recognizing that I had written these stories. I read a few positive comments from my teachers and smiled to myself.

[Click "Read More" to Continue...]

While this week’s theme is the telling of our “Writer’s story,” the truth is that I was never really a writer. Looking back, the only work of writing I ever worked on was an incomplete, blown-out retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen’s classic “The Ugly Duckling,” a story spanning twenty-two chapters riddled with long treks across country roads and many, many ducknappings (he was a very popular duckling). Besides this childish attempt at a novel, I never wrote in my childhood.

I was born on September 22, 1994 in the city of Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam. Not the beggar-crawling, crime-filled parts of Vietnam (as it is notoriously known for) or the rice-paddies-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see parts (as it is portrayed in every other vacation guide), but to the Vietnamese middle-class family. In other words, we weren’t taking money baths in marble bathrooms with gold toilet seats, but there was never a day when I was left in want. I grew up watching Power Rangers and American bootlegged tapes of Blues Clues and Barney, reading manga like Doraemon and Case Closed, playing emulator Disney games (a fancier, more technical term for “bootlegged”) like Aladdin and 101 Dalmatians, generally happy and perfectly content against the oppressive backdrop that was the Viet Cong dictatorship.

[CLICK "READ MORE" TO CONTINUE...]

Theme for March: Introduction
Tell us your writer’s story.


A/N (Message to New Friends!) :: Hey guys, I'm not trying to break one of the "Honor Code" rules here, but I thought I'd just introduce myself since the other 'Scribble Ninjas' all know each other!
My name's Melody :D ... And, I'm friends with Sandy through quite interesting circumstances, but friends nonetheless. Hope we can all get to know each other through these weekly updates!


---


Like any kid, I always loved watching cartoons. Everything about them was just so mesmerizing: characters, settings, plots, situations... I just wanted so much to be a part of those worlds, and in writing, I found a way to do that.


I started off writing a lot of fanfiction (much like a certain other "Scribble Ninja" we all know): Pokemon, Card Captors, Inuyasha... And yes, I oftentimes inserted my own Mary Sue (and yes, that Mary Sue also somehow always seemed to find a way to sweep the male protagonist off his feet, stealing him away from his canonical romance with the female protagonist). This actually went on for years and years - much longer than I would have wanted, probably. I wrote stories for friends too (because after reading about how MY Mary Sue was just SO successful with the boys, friends wanted me to create their own pimpette), so when I wasn't writing about me, I was writing about them, and it became this whole vicious cycle of fanfic after fanfic.


Eventually, I realized that that wasn't what I wanted. Nothing was ever really mine in those fanfics. Even those Mary Sue characters - they were simply extensions of someone else's work, written around the boundaries someone else has created. I wanted something that was mine.


... Continued.

Theme for March: Introduction
Tell us your writer’s story.

---

It started with Digimon fanfiction.

I’d read a bit of mine to my third grade class (I didn’t know it was fanfiction back then, I thought I was being original), and when I was done… my teacher was aghast at what I had written. From that moment, when I saw my teacher’s terrified face in reaction to my bloody, gory Digimon story, I knew I wanted to continue to entertain/horrify people with more stories.

I suppose if you want to get technical, it started with a “what if?” I was trying to brainstorm ideas to journal about, but all I could think about was the last episode of Digimon I’d watched the previous night. What if, instead of digidestin, there were ninjas and faeries and witches? The eight year old me wanted to explore that “what if?” and make it something tangible. That eight year old me also thought I was the most cleverest thing that ever walked on this Earth.

[Click READ MORE to continue...]