I love to write. Creative writing not only serves as a stress outlet for me, but also a medium for my active imagination. My love for this art began in high school and continued into my adulthood, but I never really did anything about it until I took a children’s literature course through a school in Connecticut. Then I continued with two more adult courses. After I finished these courses, I committed a mortal sin. I didn’t write. I thought, Oh, why bother? I’m just not good enough and no one will want to read what I write. One night, several months later as I sat in the ambulance bay listening for the 911 telephone, I revised an article I wrote for the course in newspaper and magazine writing. Why not? Better to revise than rubbernecking and trying to prevent my head from banging off the desk at 3:00 a.m., or banging my head and looking like a cyclops from the giant egg in the middle of my forehead.    

After I finished my revision, I sent the article to the editor of the Northern Sentry, a local military newspaper, never thinking that anything would come of it. A week later, the editor e-mailed me and said “I love your article! We’ll print it in Friday’s newspaper.” I felt so thrilled. My first ever published piece! I went on to publish 12 more articles in the newspaper for the column “Operation Homefront.” Could getting this job have been pure luck? No, because I worked hard and tried my best. The editor required me to write about 700-800 words per article. This stipulation was scary because to write short is extremely hard! Although I felt scared, I tried anyway. I kept the job for two years before the newspaper staff decided to end the column. After my job at the newspaper ended, an online fiction magazine published my first short story. I had written this story in one of courses I completed at the school in Connecticut, and I also revised this story several times before the online magazine’s editor accepted it for publication.

In 2017, I graduated from the local university with my bachelor’s degree in English. While earning my degree, I took the Creative Non-fiction Workshop, Poetry Workshop, and the Fiction Workshop to learn about these different writing genres. I learned that my strength in creative writing lay with coming up with a story idea. I comb newspapers, magazines, and other media for blurbs that I might use for a short story, or an even longer piece. My weakness in creative writing lies with dialog. Description, great. Dialog, grrrrh. I’m still improving, but dialog will always be my Kryptonite, maybe not make me as weak as it once did, but still weak, although my weakness doesn’t dim my love of creative writing whatsoever. Now, I’m attempting to earn a graduate certificate and working for the university’s newspaper. My point of this story is to never give up on your dream. I didn’t write for years, and I regret it, but I buried my fear and doubts and tried again and again…and succeeded.