About writing

I wrote a book when I was a kid. Started writing when I was about 12 years old, and it took me 3 years to finish the story. The story features Tarzan, some wild savages, explorers and of course human sacrifice.

The way I approached this project was that I basically started by collecting some background information, for example listing some words in the language of the great apes, creating a list of the characters with some basic information such as their motivations etc. I also created an overview of the story, so I knew the main turning points and the general progress, and divided the overview into individual chapters.

I must have also estimated how many pages each chapter would take, because the way I created the book I pretty much committed to a certain number of pages. Now I suppose I could have added a few more but looks like I didn't. I haven't read the story in years, so I'm not sure if it reads like I had to try to stretch things towards the end, or alternatively try to close things up more quickly. I'll report back when/if I get around to reading the book again.

I don't know exactly where I got the ideas for how I approached the writing process though, but I suppose I must have read about it in a book or a magazine or something. Regardless, it's interesting to realise I was able to take a very structured and professional approach to the writing process back then. Something I seem to have lost the ability to do in my personal projects these days.

The story itself is fairly standard for a Tarzan book, full of cliches. From what I remember, there's a tribe that abducts Tarzan't wife Jane, and intends to sacrifice her. Tarzan has to find and rescue her. At the same time there's a group of explorers, some of whom are evil and some are nice. The nice ones help Tarzan, and the evil ones have other aims. In the end the good guys prevail and the bad guys get what they deserve.

The story starts like any traditional Tarzan story.

The total number of pages is just over 100 pages, which I guess is not bad. In the beginning I also wrote very neatly, as can be seen in the picture. Later in the book, the handwriting becomes a litte more messy, though still nothing like it looks like now. Again, something where my young self was able to exercise control and patience to produce more consistent quality results.

What I'm planning to do is to try to scan this book, so I'll update here if I do. Also as I do that I'll likely also manage to read the story again.