Creative Development

By Halle Gold

Starting Out

I started to get into doing creative writing in eighth grade, when I had to write a short story about the Yukon Gold Rush. I ended up having a lot of fun with the story, even though I was not a particular fan of reading realistic or historical fiction. I was surprised by this, and even more surprised with the good grade I received after a couple of drafts.

A Little Further

I ended up taking my writing a little further. I wrote short fiction and even went into writing screenplays. There was just something about being able to make up characters and worlds where anything could happen that was just exciting. I wanted to take my writing further; maybe even become a published author at some point.

My Inspirations

J.K. Rowling and Christopher Pike

Tenth Grade

Writing short fiction and screenplays was fun, but I wanted to try another type of writing: blogging. I thought long and hard about it and knew it was going to be challenging and that there would be a lot of criticism I would have to face. But I remembered that if J.K. Rowling gave up after being turned down by so many publishers, there would be no Harry Potter. I had to try.

Present day: Blogging

There were so many different types of blogging; I honestly didn’t know which to try first! There was video blogging and photo blogging (well, I knew I wasn’t going to try that one) and so many others to choose from! In the end, I started doing a written blog.

My blog: kanna-chanscafeblogspot.com

More Blogging

I got into video blogging after seeing someone do a video review of a movie I liked. I had played around with iMovie before, but never really took it seriously, because I had no particular use for it. I decided to give it a try, and while my editing was fairly sloppy, I still managed to put up a few videos on my YouTube. My YouTube served as a companion to my blog.

ChallengesI feel like this is a list that could go on and on, because writing stories or making videos is never easy. Writer’s block wasn’t the only challenge I had to deal with. I also had to balance my time between writing and making videos with my academic schedule. In addition, there were people who made offensive comments on some of my videos. I also sprained my wrist. There were also technical difficulties coming from iMovie. And, as if those challenges weren’t hard enough to deal with, I also had to deal with YouTube’s greatest threat: copyright taking down videos.

Coping

I have a bit of a stubborn personality, and as I’ve learned, that’s both a good and bad thing. It’s good, because I don’t let anything get me down and keep pushing forward. I refused to let any of the challenges I faced stop me. Was I upset by some of them? Well, a little bit. I didn’t panic, though. I knew that this was something I enjoyed, and I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t want to give up despite one little setback. That would be letting people or whatever it was that was bothering me win, and I didn’t want that to happen. I kept pushing forward with my writing and continued to improve.

Discovery

Throughout the time I’ve been doing creative writing, I discovered that this is something that I truly love doing. I wouldn’t give it up for anything. However, it’s difficult for writers to become well-known right away, unless they’re J.K. Rowling. I decided that this would be more of a hobby while I focused more on doing other things I enjoyed, as well as my academics.