I've never considered myself a good author. Heck, I never even considered myself one to begin with. The only reason I had started writing stories was all because I had gotten extremely bored one summer. One day, I decided to bring a small one-inch binder filled with notebook paper to my grandparent's house and ended up writing about some wacky pair of twins and their fun and goofy adventures at home and at school. I ended up naming this story Finding the Heart. I never did write far enough ahead in the story to discover this heart they were supposed to find, but it still entertained me at the WiFi-less household I called grandma and grandpa's nonetheless.
It wasn't until seventh grade when I got into writing first-person short stories. Around the second half of the year in English class, I had to write a short first-person narrative about something that had an impact on my life. This assignment became what I called Everlasting Love, which was about my mother's battle with cancer from my point of view as a kid. I got a near-perfect score on that assignment, and it taught me that writing out emotions can help me cope with various difficult and frustrating moments in my life.
Ever since I wrote Everlasting Love, I've written so many dumb and edgy-teen short stories about love, hatred, betrayal and depression. Most I haven't released because either they were never finished, or were too personal to be published. However, one of these short stories I did release, which was titled I'm Okay. The contents of it summarized how my freshman year of high school was a harsh experience, both on my mental health, and my overall daily attitude at the time. I wrote that back in 2018, and yes I still had my moments since I published it, but I'm doing much better now. I found my footing and the right crew eventually.
There has been a few essays I had written that I've gotten decent grades on, and have released such as my Holocaust essay, which discussed how symbolism was used in a variety of sources and book excerpts provided to us to display the unspeakable. There were many more essays I've never released, such as my Of Mice and Men essay about how George and Lennie coped during the Great Depression, or my The Catcher in the Rye essay discussing whether Holden will be successful as an adult based on his failures throughout the novel. Both of these I am extremely proud of, and helped me improve on my writing, but I will admit, I didn't read either of the books, despite getting near-perfect scores on both of the assignments. I never cheated nor plagiarized any essay I've written, I just lucked out with both in-class discussions and the glorious existence of SparkNotes. Just a word of advice however, please don't follow my example as a student. Your sanity and mental health will thank you later.
There have been many more essays and other writing assignments I have created, since that is what a majority of English classes are comprised of, but none of them quite compare to one of my personal favorites, "Slam It!". For my sophomore year English class, we were required to create a slam poem about something significant in our life, or something we were truly passionate about and use at least 5 different literary devices throughout the poem. I couldn't necessarily think of any significant movement or ideal I was passionate enough about to where I could write a poem about it, however there was one significant event I could write about, that I was no stranger to writing about to begin with. My poem was addressed to none other than cancer itself, more specifically why it had to bring my mother such pain, suffering, and ultimately a miserable death. There was one section where I used a mixture of both imagery and personification in the poem that has stuck with me for all of these years, "After six years of trying to leave you, you dug the knife in deeper. You twisted that deadly, infectious knife of yours deeper and deeper into her body until it eventually killed her." This line is probably the best line I have ever written for any piece of literature I've ever composed, and I created this back in April of 2019, as a sophomore in high school.
As of June of 2021, I have officially graduated high school. The last piece of literature I wrote as a high school student was about my senior year; two highlights and one low point. As most of you probably know, the Coronavirus spoiled a lot of students' trips and plans, and my senior year was no exception. However, instead of writing exclusively about my senior year and the highs and lows, I decided to instead focus on the distorted normalcy of it all. Despite having a rough senior year, I somehow still managed to make the best out of it. We may have not had all of the cool and exciting moments, like most of the high school graduates before me had experienced, but it still had its shining moments nonetheless, which is what that 590 worded, five-paragraph essay was all about, and what became my last hurrah as a high school student.
I've had a hard time figuring out how to properly write this, mostly because I've been dealing with a massive non-essay writer's block for the past two years. There've been many stories I've written, but most of those were created as venting tools, and not something that was made to be published to the world, so I'm extremely out of practice. I'm hoping to have the time to create more stories and practice, expand, and experiment with different genres and writing styles, much like I have growing up as a writer over the course of nearly seven years. Heck, maybe I'll revisit those wacky twins one of these days, and make sure they find that heart this time, or maybe read those books I should've already read as homework ages ago and take proper notes on them. Who knows what life has in store for me as an author?