Badge of Writer's Pride

It was only a few years ago that I fully embraced my title as a writer. I used to say I was a singer, dancer, or an actor, which are all skills that I do not have.

I used to be told in school as a kid (and still to this day) that I was(am) exceptional at English. I always kind of shrugged it off and thanked myself for reading so many books as a kid. My fourth grade teacher wanted to put me in the gifted program because of my short stories I shared with her.

I started to realize I was a writer in my first year at a charter school. It was the sixth grade, and we wrote stories frequently. My teacher Mr. John was a natural born story teller, so he encouraged us to write. When our expedition (a semester long subject studied in all areas; math, science, english etc.) was about hunter gatherers, we compiled a class anthology of stories in the perspective of a Native, or a Spaniard. Though my story was historically inaccurate, I got a nice big four on it. (A four is like an A plus in a charter school. They grade by a rubric)

I wrote two other exceptional stories that year. One was about a haunted castle in Scotland (i think) called Los Dukes, and the other about a tsunami victim from the 2004 Southeast Asia tsunami. My teacher actually made himself a personal copy to use as a demonstration for kids in the future.

I began to feel cultivated. Like someone had seen my little plot of soil and decided to weed it, and seed it. And during my middle school years, I started to grow. I started taking poetry classes with a locally famous poet, Judyth Hill. She taught me everything I know about poetry. I still have my 8th grade poetry anthology. The best poetry I ever produced came around when I worked with her.

I finally embraced that I was a writer two summers ago, when I started my first novel. It was one of those random ideas you get while sitting down to pee, and I wrote it down as soon as I could. I had the basic idea, but not the starting words. And then it came. I wasn't expecting to get anywhere with it. After I had started writing poetry, I couldn't write stories like I used to. But it went somewhere. I ended up writing 180 pages. For the record, this novel never made it. I got another random inspiration in the shower one morning, which ended up being my new child.

Now, instead of distracting myself with fantasies of becoming a princess, ballerina, actress, rockstar, popstar, dancer, and model, I know I'm a writer. My goal in life is to win a Nobel Prize for writing, (dream big, right?) or at the very least, publish my novel.