From my kid diaries: a recording of the first short story I ever submitted - with the spelling errors intact and my commentary in blue

The one change I made to the entry is to put the story itself in italics rather than all the quotation marks I have in my diary, because it gets a little confusing.

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We got 2 Hitchcock magazines in the mail and I turned imediately to the “Mysterious Photograph.” It is a sort-of contest they have every month. They put a picture in the magazine. You take that picture and write a story (250 wds or less) about the picture. The winner gets $25 and the story apears in the next Hitchcock magazine.

Well, it was a picture of 4 people on a rocky island. One is fishing.

I took the magazine to the computer room, wrote up a story, and set it with the magazine in Mom’s room, where she was napping.

I wrote:

“Cast it over there, Starkey." I instructed, pointing to the left of the tip of a rock that jutted out of the water, "It’s in a little box."

I sat upon the rocks. The island was in the middle of a large bay, and it consisted soley of rocks and boulders. Starkey stood above me with a fishing poll, carefully casting and recasting the hook into the water; I sat below him, shouting directions; Manfred and Buffalo paced behind us.

Starkey lowered the hook, and it sank into the water, once again, with a quiet "ker-plop."

He dragged it around for a minute and then brought it out again, bare.

“I can’t Whitey." Starkey groaned. (He always told me that he called me Whitey because of my perfectly straight, white set of choppers.)

Sure, stealing all those jewels was simple, but when Manfred rowed us to the little island in his little rowboat, we lost the box over the side as we docked. Now, I could not leave until we found that box. Our Pal, Nicky, would be here to pick us up and take us down to Mexico tonight; I had to find that box before then.

“You have to." I retorted, "We’re not leaving until you do."

God knows, I couldn’t leave without my toothbrush.

Mom loved it. I was so glad. As soon as I revise it as much as I can, and give it a title, I’m going to send it to the magazine.

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I like how I was so proud and sure of this story that I printed it out and took it into my mom's room while she was sleeping. I'm sure she proofread it and made me change all the spelling errors before I sent it out. I honestly don't remember what kind of a response, if any, I got from Hitchcock Magazine.