Worse than writers block by Kyle

Worse than writers block by Kyle - August 2014 Scholarship Essay

All throughout elementary school, middle school, and into high school I was known to be an above average writer. Not that I made beautiful technical research papers, but that I had a knack of keeping a reader’s attention through stories. I was so good in fact that my class voted that I attend a field trip to a writer’s convention. I agreed to it and a week later I was off with a few other classmates from various other classes to this convention. Now this convention was huge. I mean there were people from all over that came to show off their papers, and talk about the writing process, and so on and so forth. Eventually my school mates and I all were separated into groups with other high school writers and were filed into small classrooms.

Here we all shared the papers we had brought with us that we had previously written. As soon as the first high school speaker shared their paper I had this overwhelming feeling that my writing was very subpar to theirs. Speaker after speaker went talking about their papers and reading bits and pieces of their works of art to us. I couldn't help my own imagination get sucked into their readings because their language was so enticing, so much better than my own. Eventually it was my turn I went over my paper, and guess what? No one had questions for me. I felt humiliated that I could write such junk compared to the others, and felt most importantly like a failure.

However, my writing days did not stop there and I did not give up thinking I was a failure. I realized over time that I could write just as well as those other writers. I just needed to be pushed. A little motivation if you will. Since then I have written a number of different pieces about anything and everything in between. That day I also realized that one cannot be brought down by a little competition. That losing is alright as long as you learn a lesson from your failures, and apply your new found knowledge to the future.