#oldassignments

In my eternal internal chaos, I choose to stretch my sinking hand for the rope hanging above I choose to pull myself up, out of my own crashing anxiety And in my sobriety I hope for love

I don’t know where that rope will lead, but staying rooted will keep me rotted I climb in hope I can succeed

I promise myself to not stay aimless, to fight this sense of lameness. And after all, realize, that life began a long time ago, 

To get a foot in the door of writing more, I decided to look at my old creative writing High school assignments.

The plan for The Curious Yellow Fox is to follow the assignment instructions, and then only after finishing will I read my original from four years ago. In class we kept our own blogs to keep all our assignments, which was fun to re-discover: the good, the bad and the meh. (Many of the meh posts I desperately want to edit, which I may do!)

The assignments are a whole spectrum of writing: fiction, nonfiction, reviews and poetry. I want to see where I can improve, what I like, and generally just practice and have fun with it (I’m a bit nervous about the poetry!)

I ultimately want to challenge myself, and see how my life reflects in my writing as both evolve. Four years ago I was in a completely different place in my life - a senior in High School, versus now, an intern only a year out of University. Who knows - things I wrote in High school may even be better!

The best advice I’ve ever had on writing came from this High school creative writing class: never be afraid of completely changing a piece of writing. Never be so stuck in your writing that you can’t expand creatively. Always believe you can do better!

I used to say I only write to remember - the necessary never-ending to-do lists, essential dates and appointments, even simple texts and e-mails. But in three short years my relationship with writing changed. Now I write simply because I love it. I’ve discovered a place my mind can wander to, where I spend hours completely connected with pen and paper. I need to write to express how I feel and what I think, an obsession that blossomed with every page I wrote. Realizing I craved writing took its time, but expression can take any form, and writing chose me.