Validation in school

When I was 17, I wrote a story without much thought or meaning to it. Not that I didn't try; I tried very hard.

But now that I'm older, I realise that my story had one missing component. One consequential piece of the puzzle that without it, is it even really a story?

And that missing puzzle piece is... Drumroll!

The plot. There was no plot.

I don't know what I was thinking. Nothing clearly. The story had the potential to be something great: It had the vibe, which I still find very important, it had the characters, even though they were 2 dimentional, it even had religious horror for gods sake (My 17 year old self was clearly going through things. PS don't look at how I write now. Clearly nothing has changed).

But in all seriousness, this story had a lot of potential, but I think it fell flat when considering it didn't have a clear line motivation for the characters. Without it, it felt like a mess of good ideas, bad ideas and horror vibes rolled up into one.

To be fair, a lot of my writing is still like that. I just have a lot more experience to write off of now. But for some reason, I still like writing atmospheric horror. Weird because I don't even like watching horror. I don't even read it that much! I have no idea why I write like this and odds are I never will. (At least I actually decided to branch out and write in other genres rather than get too~ comfortable. I'm even dipping my toes in non-fiction, which I never thought I'd do).

But the reason why this story in particular has stuck with me though is because it is the first time a teacher actually complimented my work and even recommended it be submitted into a writing competition.

The feeling of validation I got that cannot be described. I was a 17 year girl, in high school, not hoping for an sort of accomplishment. I was just sort of skirting by, living life one day at a time without any motivation for anything more, or anything less. I just... was.

So, I submitted it to the writing competition and lost to my drama teacher. I mean I can't really say that I lost - she was just really good at writing and good for her for winning.

However, despite losing, it did give me some direction I sorely needed. It led me into studying creative writing in university and now to here writing short stories for writing challenges.

Now I take what I learnt from that short story and now I have stories that won me runner-up in the painted prose challenge and stories like 'Fingers'. So, I haven't changed that much, but I would like to hope that my stories now are coherent enough to read and entertaining enough to stay for.

And even without mentioning those stories I've posted on Vocal, I've even written maybe one hundred other short stories or work in progresses that are just waiting to be edited, finished, or published. I just find it funny how one comment from a teacher in high school can lead me to where I am today, writing random short stories on the internet hoping for a second taste of that validation I got in high school...

I'm sorry, that just sounded really sad and I don't know what to do with myself now... haha.

At the end of the day, sometimes life really takes us to unexpected places and I am here for that journey.