A small Pentecostal church is alight with activity, and the shadows within flutter like tongues of flame. It is the winter of 2010, and while others jump and shout during this nighttime service, I am busy being at odds with the lined paper in the back of a complementary church program. An upcoming inter-school poetry contest weighs heavy in my mind. My pen has not been able to produce the words I want it to, and I have not been able to articulate the subject of my poem. As I turn my pen over and over in my hand, a man up in front leaps to the stage and says something which will click all too well with me. He spreads out his arms and shouts to the sky "The Sun rose today!" He goes on to say how thankful he is for his life and the beautiful earth. I now have the subject for my poem. My hand flies across the page, ignoring the lines and feeling for the first time the electrifying experience that is real passion. After crossing out and rewriting, what I come up with is a short piece, four lines long, but it is from these that thousands more will follow. This small piece wins me a place in the national anthology, but more importantly it helps me to realize my love for the written word. The snow outside the church contrasts in an unforgettable fashion, and earns itself a place among my more immortal memories.
More winters pass from here, and so does middle school, the drumbeat of life marching me ever forward. I write occasionally, and compete in the poetry contests within the school itself, but I desire more. I want to make a larger work, something of great substance that I can be proud of. This dream would be realized, this time during the summer between 9th and 10th grade. My most common and difficult obstacle when it comes to writing is beginning to write. I found that if you wait for the "right moment" you'll end up waiting years. So at the end of nearly every day over the course of that summer I wrote two or more poems. I found myself bringing forth from the darkness my true outlook on life. I wrote about everything from sleep to the seasons to the concept of aging, and this was immensely satisfying. Some followed a loose pattern, but most were simply what I wanted to write. Writing's beauty and potential was something I could not keep myself from indulging in.
Six years after that remarkable night, I still love to write, and plan to pursue another project when I have the absolute time to do so. Since then I have been doing plenty of reading, which I suspect is part of an internal feedback loop, where I love not only the story but also the vehicle through which the story travels. I have evolved and grown with my interests as an individual, and stand at a place with a love for writing that I did not expect to have six years ago.
