I loved 4th grade. It was a very exciting time for me. You know why? The early stages of puberty, mostly, but also because I had an English teacher - and she was the one of the greatest things to happen to me. Her, and puberty, I guess. Moving on, she had us construct a portfolio, similar to what some students are doing in this class. We had to write five stories over the course of the whole year, and at the end, we should our favorites. Well, being the ever adventurous boy I was, I decided to do a serial over a character by the name of General Morgandorf (Don't Ask, Don't Tell). Of course, at the time, I could not tell the difference between serial and cereal (nor the difference between celery and salary), so it was just a fun collection of stories about the same character that always ended on cliffhangers.
Now, in high school, I had the second best thing in my life to happen to me (For those of you keeping track at home, this is technically third, if you're counting puberty as first or second). I had another English teacher, and she had us do a similar assignment. She had us pick three author's over the course of the semester, read some of their works, and then try to emulate their style in a creative writing assignment. So, being at this stage in my life, I chose three of my favorite author's at got right to work. I did an assignment over J.R.R. Tolkien, where I so attempted to mutate my dialect into more of an Oxfordian professor who could speak emaculately to the point where no one could possibly conceive that the heavy use of run-on sentences were escaping from the page, just under their noses, like that of a mysterious thief attempting to make off with the crown jewel of some long, forgotten kingdom of yore. I did one over Douglas Adams, which was conceptually a bit harder since I was dealing with a decidely more sarcastic form of British writing and which would have been a very entertaining read if it weren't for the irrefuttable fact that my story was so inexplicably boring. I also did an assignment over William Goldman (this was before I had read The Princess Bride, but after I had seen the movie).
The two above paragraphs can be summed up as this: I had some teachers who taught me that writing could be fun, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much that I understood the power of the written word, the ability to do so much with translating a thought into something visual and readable. I would love to write professionally, but the fear of a lack of steady income is a bit too much to push my writing outside of the realm of a hobby. With that in mind, I will wrap this essay up. I don't believe there is anything to do in terms of an Author's Note, so...good-bye.
