My Writing Journey: An Introduction to My Project

Hello writers! I am Ashley Clark, and ever since I was little I have absolutely loved to write. When I found myself happy, sad, upset or bored, writing about it was the first thing that came to mind. So, for my genius project, I thought: why not further pursue what I love? The best thing about writing is that there is always something new to learn! I decided that I want to write a thirty-five page story by June 6th about something that I live everyday: high school. It will be told from seven different characters, incorporating different writing styles such as first, second, and third person.

A problem that I've noticed a lot when I write is that I never finish what I have started! I remember one night I was watching one of my favorite shows on Netflix, Love Sick, and suddenly a wave of inspiration had hit me. As I excitedly opened my google docs I noticed that I had a ton of documents dating back to the sixth grade, all unfinished. Out of curiosity I read through them all, and saw that a lot of my writing had the potential to be amazing stories-- if I hadn't gotten so bored and decided not to finish it. Though I have been writing since I learned how to properly form sentences, I've only managed to finish one story in my lifetime; the rest cast out into my archive. Since then, I had accepted that I would never be able to do that again-- until last week. While thinking in class, I realized that a solution to losing interest was to keep things fresh. Instead of writing one long boring story with your basic rising action, climax, and solution, I could free ball it; I could add in climaxes every chapter if I wanted to! But, knowing that no ones life is just full of extreme drama, I decided that I shouldn't limit myself to focus on one character, why not seven? To further see if this was something I wanted to do, I began reading Violent Ends by various writers. The book had an overall theme/topic, but had a whopping seventeen points of view, seventeen different stories in one book! I was intrigued, I had never read a story like it before, and decided that I would use this style as inspiration for my own story.

I decided to settle with seven points of view, five pages each, totaling to thirty-five pages. I chose these numbers due to the amount of time I have available until my final product is due (June 6th). Overall, the time I have to execute this is nine weeks, and I plan to spend seven of them writing, which means five pages a week at the least. I plan to spend the last two weeks of my project revising, and even trying to create it into actual book format, opposed to a stack of printed papers stapled together.

An obstacle I plan to face along the way is dreaded writers block; but when in doubt, write it out! I have a game plan on how to overcome this, my first option being to write a bunch of ideas down until I find one that really sticks with me. If that doesn't work, I will watch some of my favorite shows or read some short stories to gain inspiration, and if that doesn't work, I plan to talk ideas out with my friends. I've realized that an outsiders input can really be what makes your story sail or sink!

I am excited to share my journey with you all, and hope you find some inspiration as I try to navigate through my writing project.