An Artist's Rendition
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My first story ever was a children’s book I wrote in the sixth grade. I spent much class time on the book, making pictures, coloring, and deciding the story - or how the story would process from one page to the next. The book narrated my arriving in Canada and was also my first experience with writing. When I received the grade, I was ecstatic that I got I B! I was proud of my simple story, and so reasoned that my book was worth reading and entertaining - then again, I drew some great pictures. This assignment sparked my interest in writing, and I thought I would like to do more of it in the future.

As a writer I lay dormant until the eighth grade when once again I wrote another assignment. This time the assignment was more ldquo;adult like: to write a short story in two to four pages. I thought it not a problem as my mind started flowing with crazy ideas a thirteen-year-old boy would love to write about. I thought much about my story; I wanted to include army soldiers and big battles and humongous mechs (imagine a tank that walks) and everything that was just “cool.” I thought much about what I wanted to have in my story, except for the plot. So when it came time to write my short story in my regular “I’ll do it the night before fashion, I wrote two scenes that made no sense and were badly tied together. In my juvenile and ignorant way, I thought my story was just the greatest, and I proudly handed it off to the teacher the next morning. Needless to say, my final grade on that story was a C, and I was devastated. My thirteen-year-old self was furious; it could not see the grievous mistakes in my writing and decided never to write again on anything that I liked.

Time heals wounds, and my C paper was forgotten. The ninth grade gave me an opportunity to prove myself again and see if my first book was more than just a fluke, or for that matter, more than just a nice elementary school teacher. The opportunity came with an in-class writing assignment. The class was to describe with the utmost detail a black and white picture of an old man on a beach, next to a young child, footprints behind him, a great sea in front of him, and people scattered throughout. It was my first ever assignment on description and my first ever timed assignment since we had been given twenty minutes in which to finish. When our paragraphs were handed back, I was surprised to see a note on my paper. The note proclaimed me as the highest grade in the class for that particular assignment, and next to it was the number 93; I had an A. I went into shock; my first A in an English class, and before then I would have never believed I would receive one - especially with my writing receiving C’s the year before.

Even though I received the highest grade in class, I still didn’t think I could write well. Even as I wrote my first book, I concentrated more in the pictures - drawing is something I feel more comfortable doing. I think my low self-worth as a writer stems from having learned English late (not until I arrived in Canada during the fourth grade was I forced to learn English), and believed I owned a smaller vocabulary. That one description paragraph meant a lot to me; my English grades were never that good, and to me the A on my paper proclaimed me as one of the few that could write well, that have potential. I was now re-energized about writing as I thought it was something I could do and do well. I prepared myself to what lay ahead; English classes where writing was stressed as much as reading.

The rest of my ninth grade was spent learning some new concepts like the five paragraph essay and book reports. The former I would see in my next English classes and is something I learned to hate because of my artistic and free flowing nature - the strictness of the five paragraph essay always bothered me. I also got comfortable with in-class writing, as my teacher just loved to see what we could write on the spot. In the tenth grade, as I moved from cold Canada where everyone lives in igloos to hot and sunny Florida where air conditioning is a must, I experienced my first writing exam, called Florida Writes. Of course, being a newcomer, I was lost as to what this Florida Writes was. I learned much later it’s a standardized test given to all tenth graders to assess their writing. Fortunately I had a good teacher that helped prepare us for the exam. In her mind, our goal was simple: to convince the reader about so and so. I forget much about the process that I went through to take my exam, though my end result was a 5.5 on a scale of 6. I saw this as legitimate proof that I could write; “I am a writer,” I thought, “I can write well”. Every essay I wrote after the exam I felt confident in writing, and I received the grades to show it: all A’s and B’s. That is until I my senior year, when my views on writing changed as I was introduced to the personal essay.

Unlike most seniors, my last year at high school was packed with hard classes. I like a challenge. After years of English classes where hundreds of five paragraph essays were written, most of which required little thought, I decided to take AP English. The class paced quickly through reading and writing, and before I knew it, we had read and written more than in all of my previous classes. Adding to the pace, I was introduced to the personal essay and writing that analyzes other writings. Though I never understood how to analyze writing (all analytical essays I wrote went something along the lines of “Yes I agree or “He uses nice metaphors and similes), the essays that we analyzed were personal essays in which the honesty and self-deprecating air invited me into writing in a liberated caring fashion. Soon, any non-analytical essays I wrote became a passage into my world as person, and I wrote to express my views like the writing in personal essays. I found the writer in me released into the world as I wrote my essays, and I found myself influenced to write outside of class. Thanks to my procrastination however, I’ve only written one short story and two essays in my free time. Yet I now try to write any idea that pops in my head.

After years of learning, I finally accept my writing. I am a writer. I understood this as I received my A in the descriptive paragraph, but not until my later classes did I learn other things about writing. Even though I knew I could write, not until my experiences with the personal essays did I find it enjoyable. I have a history as a writer, a small history that so far only explores the way I came to understand myself and myself as a writer and which only explains why it took so long for me to see writing as an enjoyable activity. I have more history of writing ahead of me, as a writer of personal essays and as a programmer - my newly acquired trait, which requires writing in a language not so dependant on strange grammatical rules. I will learn some new things in my history of writing, and maybe that is why I enjoy writing.