Little girls’ stories
Published by Deanna Hoak February 25th, 2006 in kidsSo my seven-year-old daughter was telling me last night about this werewolf story she wants to write, that she thinks might become a bestseller and be turned into a movie. It involves lots of blood and body parts and scary chases and deadly potions and self-serving decisions and murder. I don’t know where she gets this stuff–we don’t watch scary movies here. I’ve never even been able to make myself watch the stomach-bursting scene from Alien, and that is, in all seriousness, the only “horror” movie I’ve ever watched in almost-entirety. I don’t do scary. I get too scared.
So she told me all about this story for maybe twenty minutes while we were cuddling before bed, and then finally she asked me, “Do you think Daddy will like it okay? Or do you think he’ll think it’s too creepy?”
I answered, thinking very carefully, “Well…you know…Daddies sometimes like their little girls to make up stories about butterflies and castles and stuff like that.”
“Yeah, right,” she said right away. “Like that’s gonna happen. I’m not a girly girl, you know.”
:-P
We’ll post the story to her blog when she gets it down.
11 Responses to “Little girls’ stories”
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I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I was short-listed for a World Fantasy Award for my copyediting.
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Love her! That’s great. And, go for the werewolves; I love scary stuff!!
She might be safer telling those stories at home than at school, though. Teachers are likely to think she has issues and turn her in to the police, the local shrinks, and the principal.
Nice.
I was reading this out loud to my wife when my own 7 year old (boy) came into the room — didn’t seem much interested in what we were doing until I reached the part mentioning “blood and body parts.” Then he stopped and paid rapt attention.
Seven. What an age.
As Tom Stoppard put it: “Blood is mandatory.”
Oh man, I do love your kid, Deanna. *g* She is wonderful.
I can’t wait. Link us to her blog when she posts, please?
Now, here’s me, just fresh from a repeat viewing of The Wicker Man, with my seven-year old already tucked up in bed. She, if interested at all in writing a story, includes all the fairies, mermaids, princesses, unicorns, pegasus, butterflies, and so on, that you could possibly want to imagine. She’s the most girly girl imaginable.
I spent my pregnancy watching Ultraviolet (vampire foetuses and all) and breast fed to Buffy. What more could I do to encourage the potential goth within?
Of course in far too few years, I’ll be complaining about the black clothes, black nails, and the too many piercings. Or maybe only the latter, so long as she doesn’t nick my black clothes and varnish.
Your daughter’s story sounds like it’ll be wonderful.
I like the part about self-serving decisions! Sounds better than your typical seven-year-old fare.
Another few years and she’ll be breaking all the geeks’ hearts. :)
::loffs Deanna’s kid::
And I don’t do scary movies either. Alien did me in for that, too!
(Of course, I didn’t want to go see Aliens after that, but friends convinced me it was more an action movie than a suspense/horror. I ended up seeing it twice in one night.)
Heh. It is funny how they work. She used to be much more girly, actually, I think just because of marketing. I swore I would never buy her anything pink, but that was all she wanted for a while.
And, yeah, her story’s pretty cool. She’s a great kid. :-)
Not to sound to new-agey, but I think all good writers tap into something beyond them. Be that archetypical imagery, collective unconscious, the Daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, or some universal creative impulse. I am never surprised when people, especially children are able to pull from beyond their own experiences. The world/humanity is far more interconnected that most us realize. It would seem that you have a talented story teller in the making and it sounds like you have a talent for nurturing that skill.