Each week in 300 words

Saying you're new is an excuse for everything

Seeing as this is the very first for-class post, I've decided to take some liberties with the phrase "or anything else you find relevant to your creative writing practice." Just in case this isn't exactly what I'm supposed to be writing about, I shall claim newbie-ignorance. Besides, I think that delving into my writing past may shine some light on the kind of work that is to come. I think it's fair to say that my portfolio was most impressive in 7th grade, when I had a skating poem published in a book. I thought I was a writing mogul until I received the book and saw that 10,000 other kids were in the book too. So much for feeling special.
Ignoring pieces for class, my writing career began at the age of 13, when I decided it'd be "supercool" to write fanfiction. The plot wasn't horrible, but the writing itself was horrendous. No...I take that back. The plot was pretty bad too. It was far too complicated, not well developed, and completely unfulfilling. At the time of course, I thought I was brilliant, connecting all the mini-plotlines together, something like Playing By Heart or Love Actually except not quite as witty or sophisticated. Regardless, I continued to write fanfiction and I personally felt that I improved over the 3-4 years that I actually kept at it (considering it would be pathetic if I didn't improve at all). I never won awards or anything, but it made me happy to have one reader (aka my best friend) who always sent fanmail screaming "MORE MORE MORE" over the span of about 10-15 lines. I'm sure she copied and pasted each line, but it still gave me warm fuzzies to receive such encouraging feedback.
As in every sad writer's tale, school caught up with me and I no longer had time to complete all my assignments, maintain a social life and continue to write. The first two were more important to me at the time, so writing was written off (badum chhh - I love bad jokes). Since then, I've always wanted to get back into the penning game so I'm starting my season with this lovely class that assigns more writing in one semester than I've done over my last 2 years here at Cornell. Hence, here I am, and if you've made it this far through my tale of excitement turned woe, I congratulate you. Here's a gold star for participation.

posted by Debbie @ 10:28 PM