Hello, my name is Emma Johnson. I've been creating worlds and giving spirit to new words for the past 3 years as a creative writer. Having the capability to take control of my life through storytelling has been an absolute treasure. Due to my ambitions, I have been able to connect with others, showing that we are all the same as humans and we all share the same feelings, through and through. Finding new paths if my original plans skew off course has become a strength of mine as I don't let obstacles hinder my overall success. I'm determined to make my dreams come true.

If I wake up and don't think of goals I want to achieve that day, I immediately consider my day to be unproductive. One of the first thoughts when I get out of bed, is "What do I need to get done today?" I write down my to-do lists in an agenda to keep track of my daily tasks. Having a sense of what I need to get done lets me know what I need to accomplish that day. Another way I try to keep a growth mindset is to welcome constructive criticism in my life. If others want to contribute by telling me how I should improve, I don't turn a blind eye. I look for help of others who have more knowledge and experience than I do to help me improve. Throughout constructive criticism that has been given to me through schoolwork, I have been able to find my weakest spots and focus more on them to help make sure all the projects I turn in are well rounded. I make sure to write down and plan out my future goals in a planner. When I tend to get distracted by obstacles that life throws at me, I can refer back to my planner and refocus my attention on my goals that I want to work for. At the end of the day, if I equally took time to work on my personal projects and finished my schoolwork, I consider my day to be productive and successful.

If I am not patient, I will get nowhere in life, literally. My dream is to become an author and screenwriter, both of which are professions that require an unlimited amount of patience. Scripts and novels are not written in one night. They can take months or even years to complete but with a steady amount of dedication, perseverance, and patience, it is attainable. I attempted National Novel Writing Month back in November of 2019. The goal is to write a whole novel in one month, even with obstacles that occur in your daily life. I started the month off strong, plowing through four chapters in the span of three days. However, after a few days, the amount of homework I was receiving started to pile up. I knew that I would have to set time aside if I wanted to complete it, but the goal was starting to drift away. By the time November was starting to close, I had only written half of my novel. If I couldn't write my novel in one month, I could attempt it in two months. By remaining patient and setting time aside for myself, I felt that I could do it. I made sure to set aside time to write, whether it was five minutes or two hours. At the end of December, with tears in my eyes, I finished my novel. In my career field, patience is something I need to have. Those words are not going to form overnight. By learning patience, I can slowly and surely work towards my goals because in the end, the slow and steady win the race.

Scoliosis was the best thing to happen to me. I was diagnosed with juvenile-onset scoliosis at 8-years-old. While in my youth it never affected me drastically, by the time I was 14-years-old, I was in need of surgery. On June 21, 2017, I underwent 5-hour spinal fusion surgery. Little did I know, lying down on an operating table that my life would drastically change in more ways than one. After I woke up, I began the process of a 6-month recovery. While my friends spent their summer vacations playing outside, I was confined to a chair. During this time, I spent a lot of time on my computer if I wasn't reading books. I was an avid reader, but never put much thought into writing stories of my own. With the impending arrival of high school, I was intrigued by all the movies I watched, depicting high school as a palace of doom and angst. To distract my mind from the pain and anxiety I was facing, I decided to sit down and write a movie script. With little knowledge I had and nothing but time, I sat up and got to work on it immediately. Writing became a comfort to me, a place to pour out my feelings when no one wanted to listen. By the time the school year started, not only was I capable of walking without pain, I had a 150-page movie script and the outline of a novel I was working on under my belt. When I was young, I thought scoliosis was a horrible condition I had acquired. Now, I see that if I didn't have it, I wouldn't have found my passion for writing and my future career goals as an author or screenwriter. This so-called curse became my biggest blessing.

I still remember the first book that made me cry. In fifth grade, students were assigned to read "Where the Red Fern Grows" by Wilson Rawls. Up until that point, I had only read small chapter books with thin pages that always had happy endings. Tackling my way through this first slightly larger novel, I was completely absorbed in the story. When I closed the book, tears streaming down my face over the deaths of Old Dan and Little Ann, I realized that no book had ever made me feel this way before. Each time I have picked up a book since I have let myself get lost through the pages of the novel I'm reading. It wasn't until after my back surgery that I found my love of writing. Sitting in a chair all summer allowed me to write an abundance of short stories and an entire movie script. The ability to pour out bits and pieces of myself into different characters was a liberating experience that I had hoped to connect with others. In November 2019, I decided to try out National Novel Writing Month. While I didn't accomplish the task of writing an entire novel in one month, I finished it in two. When I typed the last word, I felt so proud in knowing that I had written a novel in a few months that most writers take years to write. The reason that I chose to study creative writing in college is that I cannot see myself obtaining any other degree. Reading and writing have been my passion since I was young, always choosing to read books instead of building block towers in my elementary and preschool years. Writing papers for school came naturally to me and I thoroughly enjoyed all of my English classes. My dream one day is to become an author and a screenwriter. I am in the process of editing one novel and starting two others on the side. In my spare time, I am also working on a collection of poetry that I hope to publish sometime in the next year and a half. The ultimate dream of mine that I want to accomplish in my life is having a novel-turned script I wrote be turned into a movie. I wrote a 150-page movie script my freshman year of high school that I would love to see converted into a film. Receiving an Oscar for a screenplay or a Pulitzer Prize for a novel is something I wish to achieve along with a review in The New York Times. Words have impact and meaning and to influence someone through my writing would be the greatest achievement. To have an audience be able to connect with characters in my novels or perhaps become a favorite to a student who has never found reading engaging would make me proud. I want to be able to put my opinions and ideas down into the hands of a reader motivates me every day to strive to become a better writer.