Yes, I Am Completely Not Qualified for NaNoWriMo

And I will offer you proof!

This is the oldest writing sample I have. My mom left it for me in a photo book she made me a few years before she died. It's one of the very few non-photo items in the book.

At the top, in inimitable mom style, she notes the date I wrote the piece and that I was 8 years old and in third grade. Awww.

It is titled, "The Little Girl That Became a Princess"

Once upon a time a long, long time ago, there lived a girl who lived in a wood. Her mother made her do all the work of the house. Now this certain forest belonged to a great king whom the maiden had never heard of.


Now one day just as the maiden was getting water from the well, the king rode past the well and asked, "Lovely creature, what are you doing here?" and she answered, "I was born and raised here, and made to do all the dirty work of the house and I am quite used to it now." But has he had no children he said, "Come with me and be my princess. I will raise you well, and never hate you." She answered, "What will my mother do when she finds out?" He answered, "Let us flee and your mother will not be able to find us." (Her mother was a witch by trade in case you didn't know but had no way of finding anything she had lost.)


"Alright I'll go," said the maiden. "As long as I don't have to do any work." So they went off to his palace. There she grew up, married, and spent the rest of her life in that country. And from what I hear, she is ruling yet.

Now, perhaps a little history is in order. I asked my mom about this when she found it, and she laughed and said maybe she made me take out the trash that day. In truth, I was a whiny spoiled brat of a child who did nothing around the house, so I could very well have written something like this in retaliation to a simple request like being asked to take out the trash.

I was also madly in love with fairy tales of all kinds: princesses, kings, forests, all that jazz. The witch who could find things was from a Baba Yaga story in a fairy tale book.

It should be noted that nothing is misspelled in the original story, and I only fixed a couple of minor punctuation errors. Not too bad for an eight year old. I'm going to have to work a little longer to hit 50,000 words though!