About a month from the end of my 9th grade year,
I was assigned with my biggest creative writing piece challenge yet on the
genre of my choice. I was still completely in love with fantasy adventure and
knew instantly it would be my genre of choice to write about. But the main
problem still remained. What topic was worth writing 15 pages about? I made a
friend in the class by the name of Mai Ly, who I instantly asked for help from.
I remember her and many other people in my life always telling me: “You’re
creative, let your imagination run wild.”
They were right, the brainstorming wasn’t the challenging
part. I quickly came up with a big list of topics, but I wanted the perfect
topic. The book-worthy topic. So I took inspiration from my favorite piece I’d
previously written in the class, and imagined a spin-off of the plot.
The biggest challenge with this piece was the length, the
closer I got to the length of a novel the less I was sure of my writing. Longer
pieces meant more worries about pacing, amount of detail, and fighting to stay
on topic. For me all of those things were the struggles that I wanted to fix
when I signed up for the class. I had the skill to write it, but for days I sat
and stared at my introduction paragraph.
I sat in class on this particular day and listened to the
hum of computers around me, the tapping of keys, and almost the panic from the
students as the final due date loomed closer. Maybe that was just me. Still
under 15 pages, I sighed and looked down at the keys hoping they would give me
inspiration. The right shift key was missing, and the a-symmetry bothered me. I
was at a loss for words on my topic, a page and a half in. Not even a thousand
words. This was as far as I’d gone before. I remembered something I’d learned when
I did a bit of research for fun into psychology, you looked down in
desperation, and up for inspiration. So I lifted my chin and looked around the
creative writing classroom. There wasn’t much to see, the white walls that I’d
stared at hundreds of times before, the scattering of posters around the room.
My teacher Mrs. Boss was sitting at her desk in the middle of the room,
probably checking someone else’s final. I looked around to possibly see whose
it was, but only saw people hunched over computers. My friend Donovan looked
over and smirked at me. “Getting a lot done, I see.”
I grit my teeth and looked at my computer. “A lot more than
the two words you have. I can’t think of anything else to write about.” I said
and looked back at where I had left off, scrolling up and down to read my story
in full again.
“Does it look like I care about this class? I’m already
failing anyways.” He said with a shrug and looked back at keyboards on his
flash drive. “You’re trying too hard.”
“Oh bug off Donovan, leave Chloe alone.” Mai Ly piped in as
she typed a bit more, probably editing her story as she looked over her own
work before sparing a glance at me over her computer screen, tucking a piece of
hair caught in her glasses behind her ear. “Maybe you could try to think of a
conflict between two characters? Start with that and try from there.”
I sighed in exasperation with this assignment. It sounded
fun but it was so long. “Thank you, I’ll try. The ideas are flowing but I don’t
know how to put them in…” I thought for a moment and then I had a light
bulb-moment. I started to smile and typed quickly as I could. I put pieces from
the old story that was my inspiration into the new story, which added a few
pages. “A journal… Maybe she can have a journal…” I muttered to myself.
After a few more days of finding little tips and tricks to
increase my word count without much more meaning to it, another two pages was
due. I wasn’t ready to get my check-in or turn it in yet. My teacher finally
got the gist that I was having a problem when I missed the second and third
check-in dates, and she asked how I was doing.
My response came back similar to “It’s going okay!” but I
must have had a sheer look of terror on my face. She looked over my story so
far and she told me it was a good start. She also said I needed to understand
the control I took of characters. They were mine, like puppets on puppet
strings. I tried to imagine each movement of their limbs and the story
progressed at an odd rate. I compared my story to the books I’d read, and it
was the piece of information I needed. Slowly the story started to come
together, and whenever I got stuck I read back through my work so far to see if
there was anything I could edit to fix pacing or change my diction.
Eventually this became what I fixated on and it was a
problem of length all over again. The last time my teacher checked in with us
there was still a week or two left. I barely had half of my story done. She
suggested I focused on the story again and write out as much as I could before
editing. Easier said than done, but I tried to do as she instructed.
On an odd day when I felt inspiration but didn’t know how to
write it out, I went and asked Mai Ly for help. She suggested free writing to
me, but, when I asked about how to incorporate the writing I’d done she didn’t
know how. All the students but the experienced writers in the class were facing
the same problem as me. I continued to write, determined to at least have something
to turn in. I copied and pasted everything I’d written into the assignment and
edited from there. That added about 1,000 words to my story. I was almost at my
total goal.
With no further assistance I could get from my teacher, and
Mai Ly hard at work on her own piece, it was time for me to finish on my own. Using
the knowledge of what I’d learned in the class and fought to keep myself
focused up until the bell, even if I had to run to the bus. What mattered was
that I learned from the experience I gained in the class, and finished the last
assignment. To get a last minute attempt at help, I asked my English teacher to
edit my work about a week before the school year ended, which she not only did
edit but she also improved my grade in English because she found me to be
proficient in writing at long lengths. I didn’t end up getting my story back
from either my English teacher or my creative writing teacher, but both told me
when I came back the next year that they loved the story and my creative
writing teacher actually suggested I write a book off of it. Just hearing that
sentence alone was more important to me than the A I received in the class.
When I originally registered for high school, I had music
production as my elective, and was disappointed by having to take creative
writing instead, but it turned out to be the most inspirational class of my two
years of high school.
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