Affects and Conclusion

Author’s Note: Essays have never been a specialty for me yet I will try with a large amount of effort to make this one good and worth reading. I am only doing this essay for a practice package, a task I have created to improve my amateur writing skills and heighten them to the level of an older, experienced author. Why I may be trying my hardest I know you will, undoubtedly, find some grammatical errors with sentence structures and use of tenses. It is currently a problem that I am slowly overcoming but not truly concentrating on. My topic I am using comes from a Yale essay form (I want to go to Yale but when I do try it will be many years from now and surely this will not be the essay I send them. I am only fourteen); I wished to do something more informal but I have lots of projects that I am working on at the moment and, like I said before, essays are just not my specialty. Now you can stop reading this tiring author’s note and you may get on with my essay. Enjoy! (Hopefully)
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What is the most difficult feedback that you have received and how did you address it?
Through the horrible, yet blissful, steps of life I have recovered and hurt again; battling with many hardships that have been inflicted upon me by others or by my own careless doings. I have not grown up or experienced everything, and I know that I will have to take many more steps through the unpredictable tunnels that are my choices before I even reach the way out of the darkness, or in other words, before I have accomplished so much that my goal list is not as full as before.

Five years ago, when I was only but nine years old and lived a cruel life adorned with the dirty aspects of shoot-outs and poverty, I decided because of a dear best friend that I would be a storyteller. Of course, at that time of my life where making sure I made it home before the street lights came on was most important, I never knew that to be a writer would take me through such vindictive tries and defeats, yet so many blissful and praised moments.

I did not see it at first, but now I can easily compare writing to that of a relationship. See for yourself and tell me that the comparison is neither true nor accurate through the eyes of a struggling yet aspiring writer?

You love each other in the beginning and others think good of your relationship, although not all, especially the ones who are envious or the ones who know that the other will always come out most important to you. You stay together for many long years, either improving or weakening, whichever applies most to you. Than, for many reasons and some even unknown, your relationship turns into more argument and rash feedback from relatives and friends than what it once was. It is your decision whether your love is unconditional and you stay or whether you have had enough and decide to abandon your love for a new start.

I do not wish to stereotype all relationships but this one really helps for you to visualize my point about the bond your writing might share with you. This might seem weird to you, to compare writing to a relationship, but it is only to get my point across.

Now it is time to answer the question concerning my most difficult feedback and the way I dealt with it.

Before I began this essay I thought hard and long about what exactly my most difficult feedback could be, for I’ve had lots of feedback that I do not like and do not wish to discuss, and in the end, after traveling down a long trip through memory lane, I decided upon the process of my writing. Boy was there (and still is might I add) some rash feedback that I think is well worth discussing (to me at least).

Not until the death of my dear best friend three years ago did I take writing serious, as it was what he did with great skill for his age. I remembered solemnly one night, back when I was twelve, when he used to tell me with a large smile plastered on his face, “One day I will have a published book and of course I’ll sell it to you for free.” I wished whole-heartedly to take up that profession of his and continue it in a way he would if he had not died at such a young age, in order to keep him alive in my heart somehow. I was able to do so, but I became more linked and intertwined with my stories then I thought was possible; The only reason I had started in the first place was to fulfill his dreams, not to actually like it myself.

Soon enough, after I had become so obsessed with the writing world, all my family, teachers, and friends knew of my writing skill. They only gave me praise and congratulated me on my skill at such a young age. I had to say that in some point of my life pride was going to my head and it wasn’t soon before I was ready to compete with the big guys in contests. Out of all five I entered into when I was on my happy spree, I won not one. This hit me for only a moment; I decided to sugar coat the result and told myself, “Well, maybe there were so many people entering that my work got lost among all the others.” I did not truly believe my own words but soon I did and the words sunk in until I did believe it.

Still, for that entire year, I was praised and famous become of my writing skill through out the school. The reason is almost similar to Christopher Paolini’s, who is a much better writer than I, but is mostly praised because of his age, or because of the age he used to be when he first began. This praise did not help me though, it only made me grow an ego that was not cruel and hurtful to others, but made me feel superior in an odd way within my mind.

Than, fortunately and unfortunately, I came across Fanfiction.net by mistake and there was when my thoughts changed abruptly.

I am not afraid to admit that there was a phase I went through where I was addicted to, yes, Sonic the Hedgehog. I played all his games, and wasted countless amounts of time and money on him, but I did not care about that when I indulged deeper and deeper into the obsession, to the point where I would create Mary-sue characters meant to fall deeply in love with one of the characters I liked. It was insane, but of course as a crazy fan girl I did not care or realize that they were furry and imaginary creatures. So I wrote fan fiction about it; horrible fan fiction.

When I came back a month later to read my reviews I only expected to get praises but I got far from it. Out of all ten of my reviews, only two were praises, and they were written like this: I LuV YouRR sTorY!

Four of them were very disrespectful flames, which I did not know what a flame was at that time of my life, and because I was so sensitive I cried about how horrible they were. And the last three were constructive criticism, but in that time of my life I saw constructive criticism just as insulting as flames. I was twelve, but I didn’t know much about the internet or writing for that much.

How did I deal with this problem? It’s very simple, for almost a year I ran away. I never went back to Fan fiction and tried to stop writing all together. I was scarred and my desire had left.

Obviously though, something else had to happen that altered my feelings about writing, seeing as how my wish to write has come back so strong that it’s hard to imagine I ever wanted to stop.

It was folly of me to believe that I could stop doing something I loved so dearly or something that was required in school. Last year, my language arts teacher assigned us quite a number of writing assignments, which I was hesitant about doing. I reflected on what my reviewers said and cringed at having to go through such pain and humiliation again, but of course, if I failed to do the assignments and assessments I would flunk; that was something I did not plan on doing.

Maybe it was because of my constant readings of miraculous books or my attention increase in class, but whatever it was, my writing sure did look a lot better than what I composed as a twelve year old.

It was a lot better but a lot better just wasn’t enough for me.

When the seventh grade ended (a rather dramatic ending it was) I sat on my computer day after day, hour after hour, and researched the topic of writing. This was when I first found out about Google, which was the most peculiar and amazing thing to me. So I guess you could say that in the end, I dealt with the problem by maturing and learning, knowing that it was impossible to give up.