Writing and Balance

Dear Mr. Coon,

I have spent the better part of my seventeen years falling in love with reading and writing. I adore being able to submerge myself in a novel; I become oblivious to the world around me. I used to spend entire baseball games with my dad eating peanuts and reading. Not even the fans, screaming as they jumped to their feet around me, could distract me from my book. During episodes of boredom where a book was not permitted—such as church, thanksgiving, or math class—I brought stories to life inside my own mind. By fifth grade, writing had become my favorite hobby and was largely responsible for the missing homeworks that showed up on my report cards. While the other kids aspired to be astronauts or doctors or movie stars, I set my heart on becoming an author.

When I entered the high school at PCDS, I finally had to learn about this funny thing called “balance.” I couldn’t just read and write; I needed to study too. Getting lost in a book has since become a luxury I save for holidays and summer. After a few grueling months of academics, I love rewarding myself with page-turning thrillers or mysteries, such as Maximum Ride by James Patterson or The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman. Writing, however, is my true passion. Six years ago, I dreamt of a world dominated by Street-Kids who had been orphaned during WWIII and were now banding together to survive. For six years, the idea has grown inside my imagination and my computer’s hard drive. While I sometimes digress to write short stories or school papers, my book dominates most of my writing time. Besides my half-finished novel, I also take pride in the papers I wrote last year during Ms. Garagiola’s composition class. Her class was my only way to continue writing during Junior Year, and I loved the way she challenged my style and forced me to rethink every word I put on the page. Through that class, I was able to identify my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. I believe my strength lies in my ability to project any image or emotion directly onto my readers; I love to describe. My weakness lies in my love of words; I occasionally use them too much. I am still growing as a young author. I want to succeed, and the only way to do that is to keep writing.

As Sean Connery so brilliantly stated in Finding Forrester, “Writers write.” (421)