My First Story

As a writer you create worlds-- entire new worlds with crack monkeys, pitchfork twins, and sprawling landscapes of filth intertwined with bliss. Your first story is one of those that you don't imagine will ever see the light of day. By first story of course, I mean that one you wrote as a small child. The one that made you think for a brief moment that you would be a writer when you grew up, enchanting the minds of thousands of helpless people with your imagination.

Today's post is about my first story. Technically this story was a short story, which I am going to gladly post as a homage to National Short Story Month. In the first grade we were given a blank book, with about 15 blank pages inside. The hard cover had an line drawing, mine was a Unicorn. Not only were we required to fill the book with poems and stories, we also had to color this creation's cover as well. My talent's of color and coordination as a 6 year-old were not so great. Meh!

Now my formidable, extremely intelligent, 1st grade teacher Mrs. Wolf helped us by formatting the content of our book. Certain pages were saved for poetry, and she would provide the outline of the poem. Then 5 pages were set aside for a short story, which had to include illustrations.

I'll admit I was at a loss until my father said, "You should write about duck food."

So began the creative process and hence my delightful children's tale 'Duck Food':

The Duck woke up by the barn. He was hungry. He saw animals eating. So he went by the horse and he said, "This is not duck food."
He went by the cow and he said, "This is not duck food."
He went by the dog and he said, "This is not duck food."
He was sad and he was hungry. He walked with his head down. He ran in to a board. He looked up. He saw ducks eating.
"This is duck food!" He said and he was not hungry.

By:  6 year-old Landra Graf

My question: What was your first story about? Did you have horrible hand drawn pictures? What inspiration caused this story?