I never considered myself a very good writer. Occasionally I would have to write an essay for school, or a short story for my English class, but I never enjoyed the completed product. I would look back at my work and be unsatisfied, or even downright disappointed, with my own writing. I often thought that my stories were cliche, or that my essays were not worth reading. My own was not up to my own standards, the quality of it often reached far below where I wanted it to.

Not even a year ago, I took a Creative Writing class as an elective. It was the second semester of eighth grade, and even though I knew I would probably live a semester of disappointment anyway, I took it. Every day we were required to write at least one thing. Our teacher would give us a prompt, it didn’t have to be followed but it was easier to create a piece of writing with a thing to base it off of. Each class was another round of unhappiness. I loved writing, I loved the class, but I rarely thought that something I wrote was good.

I got compliments on my writing, from my friends and from the teacher, but I wouldn’t think to compliment myself. There was one boy in my class that, without really doing anything, pushed me to write better. For anonymity purposes I won’t mention any names. Every time I thought decently of a piece I had written and he shared his work, suddenly my work was worth being thrown in the garbage in comparison. It frustrated me, that he could write something on a whim, when I would sit there for half an hour at a computer or with my notebook and still be working on creating one character. As the class progressed, I became less frustrated, knowing that his parents were writers so of course he would have more of a chance at writing help than I would, my mom being a teacher for early childhood education. I stopped comparing my writing to his and started learning from him, and he was none the wiser.

I am thankful, for the creative writing class, and for the kid in the creative writing class, because they opened my mind up to accepting my own work. Even though I am never completely happy with anything I write, and I do constantly put my own writing down, I am not as unsatisfied with my work as I was a year ago. I still have a lot of room to improve, and I will never stop learning how to fix my writing so it is an even better reflection of my thoughts or ideas, but for now I am mostly content with how my writing is written.