I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Even though I was a reluctant reader in junior high and high school, I found myself writing poems in the back of class.
I've always written. When I was in school, the only teacher who ever liked me was my creative writing teacher. I used to enter poetry competitions, and I don't think I ever lost one. So I had the idea for a while of being some kind of poet.
For all its ups and downs and challenges, I love writing. We only grow through adversity, so I welcome the difficulties, knowing bumps in the road are my greatest teachers.
When I was in college, I wrote poetry very seriously, and then once I had started writing short stories, I didn't go back to poetry, partially because I felt like I understood how incredibly difficult it was.
In high school, my English teacher Celeste McMenamin introduced me to the great novels and Shakespeare and taught me how to write. Essays, poetry, critical analysis. Writing is a skill that was painful then but a love of mine now.
The most important lesson my parents taught me is that writing is a job, one that requires discipline and commitment. Most of the time it's a fun job, a wonderful job, but sometimes it isn't, and those are the days that test you.
My first true lesson in writing came from Mr. Bowden when I was 16. At my high school, he was the teacher known to be the very best at literature and writing.
I had been writing poems and stories since I learned to make letters. I had placed poems in a hardcover anthology at the age of 6. And I knew more big words than anyone else in the 10th grade.
Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.
I didn't write anything at all except book reports until I was in seventh grade, and then I wrote mostly poetry for myself.