Tuesday, 27 July 2010

A child´s story

It was 2001 and my teacher of English invited my class to submit short stories about Halloween for a competition that was going to be held here, in Rosario. She told us that members of some editorials (of which I hadn´t got a clue in those days) were going to be the jury who was going to pick the winners.

As I´ve always loved writing stories I decided to participate and that same afternoon I started thinking what I was going to write about. I remember the photo of an old house that I had taken the previous summer, when I went to Santa Fe with my family to visit some acquaintances. In fact, I had taken that picture because I had the feeling that it was going to be useful at some point in my life. And there I was, in my bedroom, looking at the photo. It didn´t take me long to invent the story. I had always read too many books both because I was asked to do so at school and because I really enjoyed reading whatever I came across.

I wrote the story and I submitted it. It was September then but it wasn´t until a month later that the news came: I was awarded the first prize in my category. I cannot tell you how I felt when my teacher phoned me to tell me the good news. Both of us were really thrilled and I was surprised as well. On November, 2nd I came to Rosario with my family to the prize-giving ceremony at Ameghino and I was given the abridged version of “Sense and Sensibility” as gift.

This morning, I reread the story. There were moments in which I blushed and I was open-mouthed at the inaccuracies and there were other moments in which I couldn´t help bursting into laughter. Now that I´ve been at College for almost five years I feel embarrassed at those awful mistakes I made when I wrote that story. At the same time, I still feel some pride at having written that tale. I was only 13 when I wrote it and the most important thing is that, apart from being the winner (something which, to tell you the truth, hadn´t crossed my mind when submitting the short-story), I enjoyed the whole process, from choosing the plot to writing the story.

I´m sure I´ll share this experience with my students in the future because I would really like to help them develop their imagination and to make them learn that there´s no need to be proficient at the language to love writing.

Now, would you like to read my short story? If so, click here. And please, let me apologize for all the mistakes I´ve made! There are some which truly deserve a prize! (Only joking!)

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