DIARY OF MY MAGICAL ADVENTURES ENTRY 1: The Octaspindle Incident

Postscript

I wrote this short story for our 21st Century Literature assignment. We were supposed to take one true event in our lives and add some fantasy into the story as a twist.

I had so much fun writing it, but I DO think it needs some improvement because it's so crammed with everything I wanted it to be--a chaotic mix of cute-but-not-too-basic teenage story, imagination-compelling magical battle scenes, tied-in plot twists, and humorous character personality and conversation. I guess I had too much sources of inspiration and ideas going on in my head that I decided to put them all in--which I know can be a big writing mistake if I don't do it properly. Maybe in the future I will improve on this, however for now I will just be happy that I passed it and got a good grade--although my teacher did raise an eyebrow at how my 8-page-long short story was 5 pages longer than most of my other classmates' stories. (It IS more like the first chapter of a novel than a short story, I'll admit.)

For obvious reasons, I've switched the names of the people in the story, however everything else is still intact.

As a little bonus information, one of the BEST parts about this short story is that when I passed it in class, EVERYBODY (including my teacher and classmates) thought that "octaspindle" was an actual word. They thought it was a "smart" word that I as a "smart" person would know.

In reality I had made it up for the creature in the story--but I was so amazed (and VERY amused) at the power of reputation.

I guess if you have the pre-perceived reputation, people really WILL believe whatever you say even if you have no idea what you're talking about.

I hope I can actually live up to such a reputation one day.

(Note: I googled it, though, and it seems that "octaspindle" WOULD be an actual word for a type of chemical structure, except there's usually a dash in between "octa-" and "-spindle", so I'm relatively safe.)