Experiences That Shaped Your Writing

The earliest memory I have about writing would be from my third grade year. My teacher, Mrs. Cibulous, wanted to make things fun and have a writing contest. The writing could be no more than a page long and could be either a short story or poem. I really liked to read and one of my favorites, (outside of the newspaper) was a pretty good sized book of nursery rhymes that I had at home. I had never written anything that rhymed, especially anything that I would have labeled as a poem, but I decided to give it a shot.
I remember that I sat at my desk but couldn’t decide what I should write about. After I stared at a blank sheet of paper for a while, I finally raised my hand (which I couldn’t stand doing, by the way, because I never liked asking for help, but I asked anyway), “Mrs. Cibulous, I don’t know what to write about.” She told me to just write about something I liked. I had an “ah ha” moment. I would write about fall. It was fall at the time, and so pretty to look at and just so happened to be my favorite season of them all. “Autumn, autumn, it is so nice, with beautiful colors to entice”. Honestly, I don’t remember how the rest of the poem went, but the first line of it has stuck with me to this day. I do remember how impressed Mrs. Cibulous was with my use of the word entice, and that I was the only student brave enough to try their hand at poetry. I also remember getting a gold star sticker and having my poem put on display outside of the classroom door along with colorful construction papers leaves around it for all to see. I was so proud! The writing contest experience taught me to be creative, take risks, that writing could be both fun and rewarding and not to be afraid to use big words in my writing. And yes, of course I won the contest. Gold star, remember?
After third grade, I continued to write. I wrote stories, poems and kept a notebook at home that held a combination of stories, poems and journal entries. As a result of keeping up with the big