#complients

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This happened when I was at Susquehanna University’s advanced young writer's workshop this past summer. (It was a wonderful experience and if any of you ever have the chance to go I highly suggest it if you're in high school that is.) It was a week-long workshop that allowed you to stay in the dorms and basically get to be a college student there for a week, with attending two writing classes 3 hours long twice a day with the professor that had been chosen for you based on your portfolio you send in when you apply to this camp. 

So we had meetings with our professor twice during that week that were one on one and we're talking more in-depth on what we personally could improve on after we had workshopped our pieces in class and then brought him the one that we had edited. 

So, of course, being the anxious person that I am I was absolutely terrified to even bring this piece to him and talk more one on one with him about it. I was absolutely terrified and not sure exactly what to do. I had completely rewritten this piece to make it more to my liking and fix some of the problems that both the class and myself had noticed when going through this piece, and I had gotten to the point where I felt like this would be okay to show him it isn’t that big of a deal, of course, I was still freaking out about it. 

I hadn’t known what to do when I went to the writing institute and sat down in his office while he read my piece over again. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as I desperately looked for something that I could do to make me seem busy while he was reading so then I just wasn’t sitting there feeling awkward while he silently read over my piece his pen marking things on my paper and leaving some suggestions and fixing grammar mistakes that I had made while writing. 

So I sat there twiddling my thumbs until he finally finished reading the paper.He had noticed that my paper was quite different from the one that he had read in class and started to give his opinion. 

He thought that the story I had written was really good and had left barely any comments. He said that he really like how I had obviously put a lot of effort into rewriting my piece and that he liked how it had been very different from everybody else’s in the class as they had mainly written fantasy or urban fantasy mixed with horror or romance. He told me that if I continued to work hard like this I would more than likely be able to make it as a writer in the future. 

Which, of course, looking back on it it probably was a pretty generic compliment but it honestly made me so happy to here someone who had several books published and worked as a professor said that to me. It gave me a sense of validation and more of a feeling that I could do this if I continued to work hard. Which to be honest was something that I struggle and still struggle with to today is finding a way to tell myself that I can do this. 

THIS IS SO WEIRD JUST 

JUST

YAY