My Writing Journey by Linnea

My Writing Journey by Linnea - February 2024 Scholarship Essay

My chosen major is creative writing. Although it has taken years to decide that I want to go to college for a creative writing major, my experiences have always pointed me toward picking up a pencil or pen and writing.
I have been writing since the age of 6. I still remember the time that I sat at my grandma's kitchen table, bored out of my mind. My grandma was at the kitchen sink cleaning up from lunch, and I was complaining, "What can I do?." She put a little dollar store notebook in front of me and a pencil. She also encouraged me to use my imagination and be creative, something that will forever fuel my personality. As I began writing, I created two koalas. I wrote about it being a hot summer day, and the koalas were brother and sister playing in the sprinkler. This is my earliest memory of when I first started writing stories.
The next story I started and finished when I was nine. This story is called Christmas With The Compton's. Although this story is so unrealistic, it really shows what goes through the mind and imagination of a nine-year-old. The story is basically everything I dreamed of: I dreamed of having animals and going to the beach; the Compton's move to a beach farm. I dreamed of going to the store and picking out my own Christmas presents. The Compton children get to go to the toy store, and they get whatever they want from the store. So much more happened in the story, but compared to what I write today, it isn't very good.
Between the ages of 10 and 15, I was very discouraged about my writing. I wrote a few beginnings of chapter books but never got anywhere. There was one thing that I stuck with, though: journaling. Journaling has helped me develop a wonderful first-person voice! One of the bigger problems I had in the time frame of 10–12 was that I didn't know there was such a thing as a short story until I became a book addict. The books I began reading in junior high were short story collections, such as 101 Arabian Nights. These stories showed me that there were successfully published short stories.
My whole life of writing I have always wanted to be published. It's been a weird dream. Even if I tried to change what I wanted to be (for years, I wanted to be a nurse), I still came back to writing. I thought writing was so unrealistic. How would I ever be able to make a living by writing? I didn't know that there was a possibility, so I stuck to more realistic career ideas (such as being a nurse). The biggest struggle that set my writing career back was not being around someone of like mind who shared the same love of writing and reading, etc. I have a lot of friends who like to read, but I never had any who liked to write.
Until this year, I had blocked out the urge to write. At this point in time I didn't have anyone to associate myself with; I didn't have anywhere to share my thoughts and ideas about writing and I did not know where learn about writing. I was completely caged by doubt and discouragement. It wasn't until I read a book this spring and was introduced to an author that everything changed. The first thing I realized I needed to do was just write and see where things went. I began to write and write and write with all that there was in me. Thankfully, due to my growing ambition to write, I began to make personal connections with authors and other people who think like me.
Then I began to write a novel. I still don't have a title for this particular one, but I wrote through two college rules and spiral-bound notebooks, and after that, I was done. I was discouraged again, so I stopped and read books for fuel. My mindset after reading a book is, "If these authors did it, then so can I."
Over time, I have grown and learned from the discouragement that used to hinder my growth as a person. It is not the failures that define me, but the lessons I have learned and the success I have had. As I strive to achieve a college degree in creative writing, my goal is to improve how I think as a writer. All I need to have is the ambition to keep going, to move forward, and most importantly, to succeed.