Timothy Snow

I fell in love with literature in middle school. It all started with an assignment. All we had to do was write a poem. The assignment did not have any rules, other than it had to be a poem. I had never been one to give more than what was asked of me, but something about this assignment made me want to try. So, I went home, thought about it for about 30 minutes, and began to write. It wasn’t a long or complicated poem, and it was just my feelings on paper. I had recently lost my grandmother and that is what I wrote about.

The next day we turned them in, and then the teacher read them out loud. When she read my short poem she stated it was one of the best submissions she had read so far, and asked if she could share who wrote it. I said it was okay and then the class clapped, and I felt amazing. It was the first time anything I had done at school had received praise, as I was an average student at best.

There weren’t any prize-winning works of art, but the way some people use rhymes captivated me. Suddenly I had a desire to read more poetry. Shortly after I started going to the library daily, and I began reading every poetry book I could find. Reading had never been something I enjoyed doing until I began reading poetry. I read all the poetry books the library had, and after I had read all the poetry books I decided to try an actual book. At first, I couldn’t focus long enough to get into it. The first two chapters took 3 days to read, but once I made it to the 3rd chapter I couldn’t put it down, and I read the rest of the book in 2 days.

Throughout middle school, I enjoyed reading other people’s work. I had written one short poem, and I hadn’t even thought of writing anything else. Then came high school. Here you had to choose elective classes, and I found a class called creative writing. I took the class because I enjoyed English at this point, and thought it might be fun to write something of my own. When I started the class I instantly disliked the teacher. She was an older lady who didn’t really care about teaching any longer, and she was only staying until she could retire. Even though the teacher wasn’t the best I still learned a lot in her class. When it came time to pick electives again I picked creative writing 2 and speech and communication. At the school, I attended these were the only two other elective English classes.

The speech and communication class taught me how to speak in front of groups, as I was very shy, and still, let me write a little. We often had to write the content we read to the class if we weren’t assigned an article to read from a newspaper. Creative writing 2 is where the real love for writing began. This teacher was young, and here because she wanted to teach English. She always wanted us to write, improve, and learn. I wrote more in that class than I had ever written before. I found myself writing even when there wasn’t an assignment. I played with writing poetry and short stories when I had free time in class or at home. The final assignment in the class was to write a 10-page short story. I had never written anything that long, and it seemed almost impossible. To make things worse I had forgotten about the assignment until the week before it was due. I didn’t have time to plan it out, but I got through it, and in less than a week I wrote a 10-page short story.

I received a C, and It was my lowest grade in the class, but it had made me realize I could write something longer than a page. Throughout the rest of high school, I didn’t write anything particularly great and still dabbled mostly with poetry. I didn’t really have a story to tell yet, so I stuck with what I found easiest. I wrote a handful of poems throughout high school and into my early college years.

While in college I met a girl and fell in love for the first time. Suddenly poetry poured from my pen and writing was something I needed to do. I had dated in high school, but no one I dated ever really meant anything. This was different, and I tried so hard to be the guy from every romantic movie I had ever seen. I attempted to make her feel the same way I did. Our relationship was short, only a few months, and it ended suddenly. I had never felt heartbreak before, and the pain I felt made me start writing multiple poems a day. I just wanted to write out the pain. I found that no matter how much I wrote I couldn’t get the pain wouldn’t go away. That’s when I realized I finally had something to write about, something that needed more than just a few lines.

I began writing my story. It started just listing out everything that happened between us. Trying to figure out where I went wrong. Then after I had the highlights listed, I began to fill in the details that linked all the things together. Before I knew it I had a story, a poorly written story, but a story nonetheless. I thought I was done. I had written my “book”. It was only about 40 pages typed with double spacing. My “book” was more of a short story, but I had completed it. I printed a few copies at Office Depot and put them on a shelf.

They sat there for a few years, untouched and ignored. Then one day I had free time and felt a need to write. I picked up a dusty copy of my story and then decided that since I was older and had a better understanding of novels that I would try to fix the story I had written so long ago. I made it through the first chapter and realized how bad it was. I almost completely gutted my original story. I forced myself to get through the story that I had once thought was complete. I changed almost everything, and when I was done I had a full 40-page story. I had succeeded in making my story longer, but this time I did not feel it was complete. I knew it could be better, but I had to take a break. I felt mentally exhausted at this point. I sat the book down again, and again it sat there for years untouched.

This time it wasn’t because I didn’t want to work on it, but because I had a life to take care of. Bills had to be paid, work had to be done, and the house had to be maintained. I had too much on my plate and no time for anything I enjoyed or wanted to do. Time went by quickly, and before I knew it 5 years had passed. Then things finally slowed down as I had a change in position at my job and my mind that had been overwhelmed now had free time to contemplate things. After a few months of less stressful work, my creative juices began flowing. I picked up the book I hadn’t worked on in years. I knew I could take what I had written and turn it into a real novel. Over the following months, I edited what I had written, adding more after each pass through. Finally, the story had become a novel. After about the 1000th time (barely an exaggeration) reading and editing it, I finally felt happy with what was there. I sat it down again, this time for only a few months, and when I read it again I still liked it. I knew it was time, so I began the process of turning it from something on my computer into something to present to the world. My first novel is near complete and will be releasing it later this year or early next year. I am already thinking about my next book, and hopefully, it won’t take 17 years to get it done.