My Writing Experience

When I was 11 years old, I wrote and published a book. While not exactly a book of any real merit, it is a book nonetheless. Of course, my work did not appear on bookstore shelves, major or otherwise, was never present at book clubs, critiqued, or discussed in any way. It is, however, an ever present reminder of an accomplishment that, since its “publication” in 2006, has a place of honor on my bookshelf. Although I must mention that the book was originally a class project and, as such, there are no other copies except the one I own. It is a testament to my career as a writer, the first milestone on a path that, at the time, I had not realized I had a desire to forge. That book bears witness to the growth and development I have experienced

I was encouraged to write , and it was in that encouragement that I was inspired to grow as a writer. I learned new techniques to present my ideas in a way that did not diverge from my personal thoughts and was rational, developing structure and form, something I had lacked and was continually underdeveloped in my papers. Thus, in both my personal and academic writings, I grew in confidence, of which I had in short measure previously. It was at this time that I began probing alternative forms of writing and began creating new short stories, confident that my experience of writing poetry and my success in developing the proper narrative writing skills through the various essays I had written would aid me in this endeavor, bringing me once again full circle to where it all began: with a book of short stories. I regularly used that book as a guide to how not to write a short story, how to better develop my ideas, improve characterization, and create a believable setting, all of which were absent in my book. In this way, I learned the merit of mistakes as a writer, that there is no real growth without failure, and without a start there is no development. My hope is that, in this way, I can use all that I have created as stepping stones, as ways to better improve as a writer, to use my former ideas to propel me towards ideas of greater innovation and creativity, and that I may use what I will create and have created to guide me through longer and more expansive works. My hope is to become a writer who reflects the greatest merit of creative writing: an uninhibited freedom of