I'm a simple teenage girl from podunk Arkansas trying to get by in the world of high school. I started writing as soon as I could, and I've never quit. Over the years, what writing means to me has changed. In the beginning, when I was young, it was just a fun way to pass the time. I go back and read those stories, and I think... Lord, where have those years gone? Then, as I got a little older and my family structure changed, I used it to block out my mother and sister yelling- kind of an escape. Years passed, my sister moved, and writing changed for me once again when I took up poetry for the first time. It became a kind of therapy for me when I felt like no one wanted to listen. Now, here we are, and I'm finally sixteen (though it feels no different from fifteen, or fourteen, or well, any of those other teen years really), and writing has changed yet again into a friend almost. It's something I can look forward to when the world has me down, or something to show the world what I'm feeling when I'm too happy to explain. I think this year is the first year that I've started writing something meaningful to the world. That's right, my writing may all be "teen drama" for some of you, but it's life. It's teen pregnancies, family issues, abuse, drugs, and all that unhappiness rolled up tight into sad beginnings, hopeful middles, and a happy (sometimes bittersweet) ending.