Throughout my life, movies, TV shows, and books have always had my attention. When I was five, I tried writing my own story with the help of my mom. She wrote while I drew the pictures. The first movie I can remember watching was Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, my now favorite movie of all time. However, I didn't really get into writing until I was in middle school, in which my craze for composition notebooks began. Although I've had many people and many a series inspire the many stories I've written, I don't think I could pinpoint one person or thing that has inspired me the most. In fact, if one thing has inspired me, I believe it would have to be the world itself. On the subject of the world as my inspiration, you have to consider three main factors, which includes personal experiences, mannerisms, and minuscule details in the day to day life. Personal experiences are a heavy factor in the stories I write. I base a lot of the situations and personalities of my characters on either people I've met or my own issues. It's not only a source of venting but it allows me to capture the realism of humans and what makes us all unique. One character I wrote in a recent story I've worked on has an acne problem where he picks at his face when he's stressed out. This was based on my own experience with acne, as I knew not only were there other people with these kinds of problems but I also came to realize that acne is never correctly portrayed in entertainment. It is either shunned or never included at all, and I find that to be ignorant. We try so hard to promote accepting who we are and representation of all kinds of people, yet when it comes to portraying realistic human beings, they don't include the minor characteristics any normal person would have. If any character were to have acne, it would be to make them purposefully ugly. This is why I wrote my own character to have acne. I wanted to show his character development through these specific features by carefully constructing a plot point where he tries to learn to overcome his acne issues and find better ways to lower his stress levels, which would ultimately lead into developing better mannerisms and habits. Furthermore, mannerisms are important parts of a person that make them unique. Whether you bounce your leg when you're trying to focus or you wiggle a pencil in between your fingers. Mannerisms make up who we are, and that's why I like to include them in my writing. I want people to relate to my characters and say, "Hey! I do that!" I want people to recognize the little things and relate to it like a person can to another person. It gives a character life when you give them little habits like picking their nails or constantly popping their wrists. These make up the minuscule details of life as well. Unless you're paying close attention, you're not going to notice your uncle has a twitching problem or your aunt likes to chew on her tongue when she thinks. It's details like the sound of rustling leaves that make a story realistic. Ultimately writing has become my passion, alongside my goal to write realistic characters. I love little details and what better place to get it from than the outside world around me?

Imagination has become a key component in creativity, and at a young age, I developed this ability to see beautiful images in my head. This ability is what has drawn me towards writing. I can express what I see in my mind through all kinds of words. With the development of my reading, writing, and creative skills came the yearning to entertain and continue growing these skills. I want to write stories with relatable and realistic characters in the sense of their personalities. I've noticed through my readings that not many fictional characters have common features such as acne or acne scars. They don't have details one would consider disgusting. That is why my goal is to create characters that are realistic when it comes to physical appearance. The world has turned acne into such an ugly thing, and while yes acne is considered poor hygiene, everyone gets acne at some point. It shouldn't be shunned so casually. I want to share important messages such as this throughout my writing. I want to make characters that wear their features proudly or, in the case of acne, learn how to take better care of themselves. Furthermore, I want to convey powerful emotions through my writing. I want people to see my characters and feel how they feel, either through a screen or on the pages of a book. I feel like one of the major problems with modern animation, that they are recently starting to tackle, is situations that contain much emotion. For example, movies such as Inside Out 2 and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, can provide prime representations of panic attacks. I want to be able to convey and write situations such as this as they are very common not just among my age group but all over the world. I want people to know they aren't alone, and that it can happen to anyone. I want them to know there's even a fictional character who has had to deal with the same thing. Not only this, but I want the rest of the world to learn about problems like this and come together to figure out how to help their friends with these problems or, if they have these problems, learn how to combat them for themselves. Lastly, I want to share my own creativity with the world. It pains me to have to contain my own writing, and I want others to love my characters just as much as I do. I want people to experience at least a fraction of what I experienced while writing my stories. However, I always stick to the idea that there is always room for growth, and that is exactly why I would like to major in English Literature and take creative writing to learn more and figure out how to become a great writer like authors such as Erin Hunter and JRR Tolkien.

For most of my life, writing has been my top priority and it reflects based on some of the classes I take and even some of my friends. A lot of my friends are readers, or writers like me and it's one of the many reasons I enjoy hanging around them. However, like any friendship, you're bound to run into a bit of an issue to get around, and said issue usually teaches valuable lessons. Like any other person, I have run into an issue like that and I learned my own lesson from said problem, and that lesson is to not let someone's personal critiques of your creation get to you. During my transition from junior to senior year, I started yet another story that focused on topics such as war, government, equality, and journalism. I decided my main character would be a black female college student who had lost her drive. In the story, she would slowly fall in love with a guy who I put a lot of hard work into writing. The male lead was a skinny white male who I put a lot of effort into writing because I wanted to write a character that was different from your normal run of the mill male love interest. I wanted to make him vulnerable, shy, and give him tons of tattoos, along with a problem where he continuously picked at his acne. I chose to make him like this because I wanted him to be realistic. I wanted him to be relatable to some people and it made me excited to share with my friends. Over time, I gathered somewhat of an audience as I began posting things relevant to my story. I made character playlists and posted snippets of the story on my Instagram story. A few of my friends actually started reading my book while it was a work in progress, given they had permission of course. One of my friends - who is named K for the sake of storytelling - became a big fan of my main character and developed a sort of crush on her. Every time I would see K, she would go on rants talking about my main character and how much she liked her, joking that she would marry her and they would have kids and cats. One morning I was sitting in my study class with K and another friend I will call J. K went on as usual to talk about my main character, saying she wanted to marry her, and I explained my main character liked men rather than women. It was then J spoke up and complained "I don't understand why she (my main character) is with the skinny white boy. Why is it always the black girl with the skinny white boy? Why can't she be a gay black queen?" On that note, I became rather upset as I loved both my main character and male lead very much. My characters are like children to me, in a sense, and it hurts that my friend would say such a thing. Eventually I came to the conclusion that J's opinion didn't matter. If she wanted a gay black female character, she could write one herself. The story I'm writing is mine, and just because I'm not doing what someone else wants doesn't mean it's bad. What matters is that what I write makes sense and I enjoy the journey of writing it along the way.