When I started writers’ workshop I wanted to learn about how to put together a story. I’ve known for a very long time that when I grow up, I want to make cartoons and comic books, but I’ve always struggled getting anywhere on my projects. Since middle school my brain has been filled with stories of action and romance and interesting (often bad) character designs. I’ve laid out plot synopsizes, and written episodes among episodes. I’ve studied shows, and manga’s, and I’ve worked endlessly for the pictures in my head, but I’ve never, in my whole life finished a project, nor have I ever considered myself a writer. I just wanted to draw pretty pictures for a living. The writing was only a step to get there. I joined this class only to learn what I needed to. It was to be a burden.

I expected to draw comics and finish one of the half stories I have sitting on my book shelf at home right now. Writer’s workshop was to be the perfect avenue, but that isn’t what happened at all. When the year started, instead of touching the ideas I had, I wrote a reporting piece about the Taliban, and for the first time ever I finished a piece I genuinely cared about. It was poorly put together, rushed, and quarantine ridden, but it was done, and it was the first stepping stone on a long path. As the year went on we approached the traditional narrative I’d held in my head with increasing speed, and between American Literature and Writers Workshop I was turning out more and more pieces, not for the sake of story, but for the sake of fun. I thought “ I am not a writer, I just put together words for school,” but I had to come to terms with the truth. I wasn’t exactly bored. After the first piece I wasn’t struggling with deadlines at all. I found myself throwing on those noise cancelling headphones, and the pretty purple lights and flowing. I wrote my most ambitious piece yet. I wrote about my Mom, and as I did, I felt better. I felt like I had been heard. I wrote poetry, and it flowed onto the paper in a single class period. I started enjoying the little changes in punctuation and rhythm.  Maybe all the little songs I wrote had really been poetry this whole time. Maybe my art had helped me write. Maybe I was becoming a writer. Maybe this whole time I had been a writer.

This year in writers workshop I did some things I’m really proud of. I gained the functionality I needed to start and finish pieces, but much more than that I gained an understanding of my identity. For my whole life I’ve been drawing, writing music, writing stories, and writing poetry without ever realizing that I am an artist. I can write. I am a writer. I have so much creativity, and passion for expression, and I never knew how special that is. I don’t know the ins and outs of story. Story, like every other art form, is infinite. What I know now is that I am a part of that infinite system. That’s a beautiful thing.