I remember the ridicule and taunting that came with being expressive and wanting to share my liking for writing when I was only in elementary school. I was in the 5th grade when I started writing short stories for class. I went into a lot of depth and detail when it came to writing these short stories. I would research facts on the topic I would want to write about, create a dramatic flow to it, and being as descriptive as I can. It was something that I felt I could truly express myself through and I had so much to say that I felt I needed to get down on paper. I went on reading them in front of the class and the other kids would laugh or make fun of my use of words to describe things, like when I talked about someone’s physical appearance or the emotions my characters in my story felt. I felt the heat radiating off my cheeks and my stomach turning and twisting like a roller coaster from complete and utter embarrassment. After that, I did not read my stories out loud for the rest of the year. I felt humiliated and discouraged from doing

something I actually enjoyed.

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Later on when I got to middle school, I truly got to explore the art of literature and writing. My humanities teacher handed me a book called Impulse by Ellen Hopkins and I completely fell in love. I dove into her sea of words and I did not want to come out. I was only 12 years old and reading a 600 page book that I finished in just the span of two days because I just could not put it down. The way she wrote, how she expressed the emotions of the characters in her book, the topics she chose to talk about, and the way it taught me about real life situations that I did not understand because I was so young and that changed me. Ever since then, I found myself thinking deeper, being infatuated with the different worlds I felt myself being drawn to because of these books I had read. Later, I took notes after being able to scrutinize these different worlds and I became inspired. I thought, well since these authors can write something that other people feel enjoyment and obsession over, then I think I can do the same.

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At 13 years old, I began writing about everything and anything. I went from scribbling in

my notebook, writing a short story or two that were only two to three paragraphs long to writing full length stories with a plethora amount of pages that displayed different real life situations by age 15. There was a sense of satisfaction when I wrote until my hand felt torpid and it throbbed from restlessness. Growing up in New York City I feel that, in my opinion, I grew up quicker than regular kids my age and felt wise beyond my years and still do. Not only because of what I saw everyday, but because I pushed myself to dig deeper about the world I had around me. The skyscrapers that reached to the sky and the rush of people in the streets who looked like ants to those skyscrapers. In school, if a teacher assigned something, a short writing assignment for example, maybe a paragraph or two and we had only class time to complete it, I would take that simple assignment and break it down into different miniscule aspects. I would add more than I needed to because I just had so much to say. Being able to extract parts and wanting to develop something to cause my teacher and classmates to think deeper, think broader. If I could change the way someone thinks and see things through my writing, then I know I did something right.