Here is something I wrote when I was 10. It is pretty bad, but the more eloquent parts were written by my friend, it was a "group project". Sort of. Prepare to laugh your head off.

Queen of Land and Sea

At the time when mermaids lived and when dreams come true, by amazing happenings a child was born in a faraway land, a child who posessed a power that no other being could own. This all came about by a mermaid mother and a human father. She being queen of the mermaids and he being a king of the human race. How they married is a different story.

THis child possessed the power to turn herself into human or mermaid. One day as the was taking her daily promenade along the beach, (this was her favorite place for it was the meeting place betwen land and sea) she happened to see a traveler form a distant land. It was a woman with a child in her arms. The woman asked, "Is it true that you can turn yourself into human and mermaid?" "Yes," said princess Marie. (for that was her name) [Mistake #1 Not mentioning name until now]

With this princess Marie slipped into the water and all that could be seen was quite a lot of splashing. In a minute a flick of a tail could be seen shooting above the water. The woman gasped "Oh, oh, oh," and fainted. [Mistake#2 Stupid!!!] "Don't worry," said princess Marie. She sat on the beach and pressed her belly button. [Mistake#3 Stupid!!!] Suddenly, she was caught up into a whirlwind of light and for a minute she could not be seen. Then the light subsided, and there she stood, a human.

We have taken you on this prominade to give you an example of how Marie changes from human to mermaid. Now the story really begins. [Mistake#4 A bunch of pointless writing to explain almost nothing; the rest of the story is about the length of the previous]

And the rest of the story goes on to speak of how she grew up and inherited both the land and the sea, and her ridiculous search for a husband, (she wants one with the same power as her, so she won't be lonely without him when she goes to rule her other land) despite the fact that the story plainly states she has a power that no other being could own.

Here's a poem from my hall of shame. A delightfully awful one, as required.

Seaside Sunset

A curling wall

Of molten gold

Too valu'ble 

To e're be sold.

A blazing sky 

With fire hued

Like marigolds

With light imbued.

The leaves and grass

Reflect the sun

As ever since 

The world begun.

And even rocks

Are topaz hued

With garnet tinged

They're lovely viewed

All fire now;

It won't last far;

See? Now all's black

'Till beam of star.

This is probably one of my worst. I was infatuated with the words imbued and hued, which conveniently rhymed, so much so that you can sort my poems chronologically based on how often I use them. I was also goo-goo-gah-gah over lame similies, hence my massive overuse of jewel, fire, and flower ones. I saw shortening words with appostrophes as the best way to get the rhythm right. And I had really archaic word choices. I think the third stanza is the best, but even it's pretty lame. Ick. Wow, if I didn't have a pen name, I would delete this post and burn my computer for even offering the "Submit" option.

Here is a bit of my awful story. I stopped it, hence the fragment at the end, because it was just too henious to continue.

Ambrose Litning walked down the crowded hallways of Tamison High School. The reason it was crowded was that Ambrosa had a large posse that followed her almost everywhere. The people in the front of the group, her two best friends, Jem Laufe, and Tanasha Heart were talking to her about the new cheerleading outfits.  “So like, will you please change the color Rosy? You know green doesn’t, like, go with my hair.” Tanasha fluffed her shiny red locks. “I look like a giant carrot.” Ambrose rolled her eyes “Tashy, you look great in anything. But just for you, I’ll get the colors fixed. We still have to do our school colors, but we can have silver as the major color and green as the trim.” Jem nodded “Yeah totally Tashy; that will be so easy to change. And like, silver looks great on anybody, especially us!”Ambrose snorted “Not everybody. Just look at Wendy.” She pointed to Trisha, who had been dubbed ‘Wendy’ by Ambrose’s posse, for her obvious love for fast food. Jem giggled loudly, she winked at Ambrose and walked over to Trisha. “Hi.” She said and smiled. Trisha looked up surprised, “Hi!” she said excitedly. “Give me a minute.” Jem said and laughed. Trisha looked confused “Um, okay…”Jem stood there a second and then said “Okay, I’d like a large coke, fries, and a bacon burger. How much will that be?”The posse exploded in giggles, Trisha blushed and ducked her head. Ambrose walked over and said in a loud voice “Um, hello! She asked how much it would be. Gosh, your service isn’t very good here!” Ambrose and Jem high-fived each other. Just as Ambrose was about to go for another attack, she felt a tap on her shoulder. 

She turned around to see spunky Mikkie Rivers glaring at her. “Leave Trisha alone Ambrose.” Mikkie said, stepping foward and grabbing Trisha's arm.

This is, I think, the earliest of my projects that ever got written down, not counting the very beginning of one story that was even worse, but wasn't on the computer. I still like the basic plot line, but the writing was abominably bad. Unfortunately, I no longer have the very first part. I realized the entire thing was garbage, and began rewriting it a while back.

As far as I can remember, it started with something like 'Julie ___ was a wizard. She had discovered this some years ago...' and then directly into the story. 

She was sitting on the porch one day, and she glanced down at her hands and her fingers were glowing. After a good bit of staring at her fingers, she, led by some instinct she couldn't explain, brought her hands together and pointed them at a dead leaf on the ground. A glowing stream of light came flowing out of her hands, and surrounded the leaf. The leaf started floating up into the air! It finally attached itself to a branch on the tree above it, looking green as any leaf has a right to look. Sarah gazed in wonder at the leaf for a moment, and aimed her hands at it again. The leaf promptly fell to the ground, looking dead as ever. She gazed at the leaf for a while and then started on the more concerning matter of what to do about her glowing fingers. She finally figured out that she could make them stop glowing by tapping them against something. She had then gone downstairs and flopped on her bed and thought. The result of that thought was that she never told anyone, not her mom, not her dad, not her twin sister, that she was a wizard. She hadn't known at the time that wizards were called wizards by everyone who knew about them, she just never liked the name ''witch''. 

Our story starts six years later with her family moving into an old house in the country. The old man that had lived in it had recently passed away, and his family was selling his house complete with everything in it. Her parents fell in love with the house, and they bought it. Julie and her sister Sarah had refused to go see the house, due to the fact that everything is much more exciting if you don't see it  until it's yours. So today was the first time they had seen it. As soon as they turned the corner both of the girls gasped(revise word). They both knew that they would love the new house. Looking at it they wondered about it. Sarah, more interested in history, wondered who had built it. Julie wondered if the room in the tower was a bedroom, and if so, could she have it. 

      ''It looks a whole lot bigger than it is from the outside.'' their mother said.

       ''Can we explore it?'' they didn't care about its size right now. 

       ''Well I guess that would be alright, but don't break anything. Some of the things might be valuable, and most of them are very pretty.'' 

      ''We'll be carful. don't worry''

They then ran inside and forgot to be carful. 

"Look at all the stuff in here!" 

They split up almost immediately, Sarah going through a little door that turned out to be to the kitchens, and looking around found some very old appliances that she had to figure out, and Julie taking a hallway that led to the living room. She saw, in there, a tapestry on the wall, and investigated. It was a secret door! going through the hallway behind it, she found a library full of old books. Exploring took all day and entailed finding several secret passageways.  The house turned out to be just as big as it looked on the outside, but a lot of it was hidden. Both Julie and Sarah got secret rooms for their bedrooms, Julie's connecting to the secret library that she had discovered by a secret passageway she didn't know about at the time. (The tower turned out to be the only library that wasn't hidden.) She found out later, when she was in the library, pulled out a book, and a passageway opened that led to her room, as she discovered when she went down it. 

    And so they happily settled down to a new life filled with secret passages, old stuff and more. The secret passages were everywhere. Most of the time, when someone discovered a secret room/hall they made it in to a treasure hunt, so as soon as someone noticed the note telling about the secret place, the entire house  was scoured for the rest of the clues and the secret room. Julie found a floor plan with secret halls and rooms on it and put it back where she had found it as soon as she realized what it was. It would be no fun to know where all the passageways and rooms were! The old stuff was also really neat. At least most of it was. Some of the old books about technical stuff sat adding to their collection of dust, and the ancient spider webs weren't that interesting. But there was lots of other stuff. Sarah found lots of old history books that she read for hours on end sometimes. Julie found random gadgets that she had to find out how they worked. She asked her father about some of them, and he told her they were old ship navigation devices. He told her the names too, but she promptly forgot them. The garden was wonderful too. It was the old-fashoned kind, with a wall around it, and a sundial and everything. It was a wonderful place to sit and read. Julie loved reading. She read fiction, mainly, and loved stories about magic of all sorts. It gave her a laugh a lot of the time, whenever she read about what other people thought wizards, or just about any kind of magic, was like. None of them were even close. Although there might be something in unicorns or other mythical creatures. It'd be neat if  there was, but she wasn't getting her hopes up.

After a while, she decided to go explore the basement. She thought her mother and father had been down there when they bought the house, but she didn't think they had done much else. She assumed there would be lights down there. 

I jsut found a book about dinosaurs I wrote in 2nd grade. Ths dinosaurs part was assinged, so it's not my best topic. Anyway, here it is.

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Six cretaceos dinos came down a mountain into a valley bordered with trees. A hunter-caveman came out of a cave. He shot a stone arrow at one of the dinosaurs but he missed. He went off to find more of his people. Meanwhile the dinosaurs hid in the trees. They heard a horn call. A thousand cavemen rushed in riding mammoths. They quickly surrounded the dinosaurs.Suddenly, this biggest dinosaur made a space in the ring of cavemen by running through it. The dinosaurs were free.

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Bam, no plot. That's the first 2 pages.

((Aha! I found a short story to use. It's really overused, and very predictable... :\ It's a ghost story, by the way... ))

Ghost Ship at Full Moon

One night at full moon, Lisa was setting by the bay waiting for a rent boat to come. She needed a boat to get to a small island off from the bay to help her mother do something. Lisa waited and waited but nothing came. Then she saw a light in the distance.

It wasn't a rent boat, though. It was a ship! When he got to the dock, the man in the ship saw Lisa and asked her if she needed help. She said yes, and so the man gave her a ride to the island she needed to go to.

Later on, Lisa was explaining the story to her father about how the ship took her to the island. Looking very confused, her father said, "Lisa, a ship hasn't sailed here for years. Only rent boats, because they can only go a little ways out." Her father said it's too dangerous for ships to sail here, because of all the pollution.

Lisa was scared and confused. She noticed the ship was only coming on nights with a full moon. So one of those nights she decided to talk to the ship captain. He was so angry at her for figuring out his secret that he hung her! Now she haunts these waters, because she never got to say good=bye to her family... but only during a full moon!