I was never a good writer, but now it’s my job

I was an early reader. My mom was a pre-K teacher for years and always purchased books for me. There was a time where I loved the ocean (despite being scared of water), so she bought me every cheap ocean book she could find. Another time I was into dinosaurs, mammoths, and other extinct creatures, so she sought out on a quest to find every book about all of these things. I also grew up watching shows surrounding reading or promoting it: Reading Rainbow, In between the Lions, Arthur, and Sesame Street to name a few. Reading is a loved hobby that’s a part of my everyday life, so I should be a natural writer, right? Well, not quite.

The short answer is yes and no. In high school, I would be lucky to get a B on any essay. I was in AP classes for English, but I would always end the year sitting on a 75–79. I excelled in my other classes, so I did not really know what the issue was. I had a couple of English teachers who told me that I was not a strong writer and if I did not understand something, to take up extra time at home to figure it out on my own. I was a teenager during this time, so of course I never did. I always opted for reading Sherlock Holmes, Stephen King, or Octavia Butler over Shakespeare. I began to accept myself as a not-so strong writer and just an avid reader with strong reading comprehension skills. I often joked about being in a college-level class but being the “worst” writer in the room. In reality, I was never a bad writer. I was just out of practice when it came to academic writing, and nobody actively taught me how to improve my writing that way.

I felt this way until I entered college, where I took a creative writing course as my first college English class. My professor really liked my writing. He asked me if I wanted to make a career from it and how long I had been writing — his questioned kind of stunned me. I always loved reading and writing, but I had viewed myself as a lousy writer. I never considered my writing to be good, let alone great enough to be published.

Now I know that since it was a creative writing class, it gave me more leeway to use my imagination and break a few grammatical rules and conventions for the story’s sake. For once, I was happy and inspired to write, not dreading it and getting something wrong. It was also at this point that I learned I was actually a strong writer. I just wasn’t great at academic writing as a high school kid, which makes sense to me now more than ever.

As my college career continued, I learned and relearned a lot of the basic and advanced conventions of academic writing with the help of my professors. Despite learning about the various different forms of, I also learned that you can do literally anything that you are willing to work towards.

I realized that the small dream I had of being a writer was possible. This realization was a relief, and it gave me permission to dream BIG again and revisit all the aspirations that I pushed aside because I believed that I did not have that talent or skill.

After working on a few writing samples and writing internships, I found my spot in the copywriting and content writing space. So now it is my job to write, which kind of blows my mind. 15-year-old me definitely would not believe it. But here I am, once a straight C English student that now writes as her job.