I was just going through my google drive, and guess what gem I found?

...

MY FIRST DRAFT OF THE GIFTED.

Oh my god, I can't believe this. I'm looking over it, just like... how the hell was I so bad at writing only two years ago???

The only reason it exists is because in seventh grade we had this project where, in partners, we had to write a fiction story. My partner and I, naturally, procrastinated until the last minute. Then I ended up writing and editing pretty much the entire thing over two or three days, while my partner worked her ass off trying to complete the stupid character profiles and plot diagram that we were supposed to do.

So while the original idea was something we came up with together (actually, I proposed it, and we both built off of my original thought), I do consider myself the main author, because my partner wrote very little. And what she did write, I heavily edited.

This version of The Gifted is DRASTICALLY different from what I have now. It doesn't take place in the future, and there's no Examination or anything, and the Sectors and the City don't exist.

Tbh it seems so cliche and bad now... like wtf was I doing in seventh grade? I guess it's not that bad, especially compared to some stories I see on Wattpad now (like, there's fairly decent grammar in there, at least), and when one of my friends was peer editing it before we turned it in, she was fangirling over it and saying it was amazing and everything. (I think she has low standards.) And my partner and I did get one of the highest grades out of all of the students that my English teacher had. (Although half of those points were from the good job my partner did with our character profiles and plot diagram lol.)

So, I mean, maybe it's fairly okay for a beginner. And for something written and revised and edited over half a week. (We needed to work on time management skills. I still do.)

.....................

Okay, it's been a few minutes and I've looked it over. And I've decided that it's worse than I originally thought.

I've also typed up these things as I read through, so here are my thoughts while reading:

-Oh my god this is like the cliche waking up to an alarm clock beginning, except she's woken up by a person instead.

-What the hell are these NAMES they're so unoriginal and cliche???

-There is no character development whatsoever wtf

-THESE CHARACTER'S PERSONALITIES ARE SO BASICCCC

-...when you try and fail to build up suspense and an air of mystery... WHAT IS THIS

-Okay I remember this now, the story was supposed to be around seven or eight pages but I wrote that amount in like exposition and basically the beginning of the story, and then my partner was like wtf are you doing and then I had to cram in rising action and then climax and falling action and resolution and all that nonsense in like a quarter of the space it was meant to take up. My partner did a LOT of deleting, I think. Dear lord how did we get a good grade on this???

-Oh my GOD I can't believe we tried to include a major plot twist in there.

-LIKE WTF WERE WE ON LIKE THERE WAS NO TIME TO BUILD UP SUSPENSE AND DROP HINTS FOR A FRIGGING PLOT TWIST WHAT WERE WE THINKINGGGGG

-Oh my lord we also tried to add in a depressing sad scene. And failed miserably. This is painful to read.

-Oh, wait, that's my writing.

-I blame my partner for the idea though.

-OKAY WHAT IS THIS LAST SENTENCE????? IT MAKES NO SENSE????

-Oh wait I'm looking at the rubric and my teacher's comments, and it turns out that we forgot to say what our theme was in the story until the last second, and we were stupid and didn't see the frigging good v. evil type thing and just tossed in this cheesy and unrelated sentence at the end. And then pretended that was the theme. My teacher saw right through it.

-Oh, joy.

-We lost points there.

-HEYYYYY HOLD UP I JUST REMEMBERED WHERE THE TITLE CAME FROM. It was the day the story was due, and we had just realized that we didn't have a title. So we were panicking, because there was like five minutes left before the online deadline and we didn't have a frigging title, and then I had this sudden thought and was like, "LET'S NAME IT THE GIFTED AND CALL THE MAGIC POWERS GIFTS." And my partner was like "OML YOU'RE BRILLIANT YOU'RE A LIFESAVER LET'S DO IT."

-So, not only did we add in the title last minute, but we also had to go in and frantically write in mentions of Gifts here and there in the story.

-And yes, my current title is a result of extreme procrastination and forgetfulness.

........

Anyone want me to copy paste this terrible first draft into this rant book?