How The Stories Begin:Just Write It July 2016

High School

High school. I have only been in high school for two years, and yet I have so much to talk about. This is the best part of this writing. If you don't know, I am a rising Junior. Most of us can agree that high school is way better then middle school, and I go to one of the best. I go to Archbishop Spalding High School and I will never regret my decision. I decided to get away from the bullies and go to a school where none of them would follow me. They would all go to the standard public, and I would work my butt off to get a music scholarship to an expensive private school. I got the scholarship and began my high school career at a school where the education was like no other. I struggled really hard my first year. I couldn't get the hang of it at all. I was a little girl that came from a terrible public middle school in a sea of highly educated kids that mostly came from private schools prior. The education was brutal for me because I never was pushed to be my best until now. And my freshman English teacher was not the best. I tried to show him my writing skills whenever we had to write something for class, but he was such a harsh grader that he saw none of the actual skill in my writing. My short story My Wish to the Brightest Star here on Wattpad was my first love related story. I wrote it in the beginning of the year for an assignment on some sort of fable chain story with a group. The group actually put all the transitions in my hands and I meshed our stories perfectly. I stayed up until three that morning. I was so proud of the writing, but my teacher wasn't impressed at all. Even though there was no page limit, he told me it was too long and took my grade down because of it. Also, in summary, he told me that fables are supposed to be only fiction with dragons and witches and hated the fact that my story alone was more realistic. You can get more information in the introduction of My Wish to the Brightest Star, but you can make your opinions. Also at the end of the year, we all had to write a final paper and I wrote mine on the Armenian Genocide and put a good amount of effort into it. But he, as usual, was a jerk about grading it and I got a C. Just because he didn't like my writing. I tried a couple of times to tell him that I write outside of school, but even I wouldn't want him involved because he would be one of the many that would think I couldn't do it.

I started to get bad grades, as you can clearly see, so my mom decided to put me into math and English tutoring. They were separate things, though, just for your information. So my English tutor is a Korean who has a serious degree in English and teaches at a university. During my freshman year, we worked on grammar and essay writing. My tutor saw through my essay writing after a couple weeks that I was experienced in writing. She asked me about writing outside of her class. I told her about my book and how I write on my own time. And then sometime in December, she told me about this national competition called the Scholastic Writing and Art Awards Competition. She said that there was a short story section that she wanted me to try out. Now the funny part was that she needed the story in three days. I knew that my mom was bad at time management, but even the college professor? I was shocked. But I tried it anyway. If I didn't finish the story on time, I would just have the beginning of a cool story. But the minute I got out of class, I went to the back of my notebook and started writing. I had most of the rough draft done that exact same day. I finish and proofed it the next day and I emailed it to her the third day. I can't believe that I had that special power in me to just write a three-thousand-word short story in three days. She was even surprised the I got it done and had little to say about the actual writing. I didn't really even change any of the story after our proof read session later that week. I sent in the story to the competition and awaited news for two months. In February, I got a thick envelope in the mail addressed to me from the competition. Inside was a congratulation letter and a certificate. I won the Honorable Mention award for my short story Madison's Willow. Only 30% of all the entries were given awards and about 300,000 entries were sent in. I was shocked that my three-day story was awarded anything at all. I was so proud of myself. This was the moment where I knew that writing would forever be a part of my life. I had a talent that I would never want to lose. If you wish to read it, I posted it on Wattpad.