I feel many writers may relate and I think it is important to bring light to the freedom and pure joy that writing brings to so many of us. This piece fully explains my personal experience with writing and the reason it is so important in my life.

After reading Ross Gay's "Book of Delights," I was inspired to write about one special joy that came about after a year plus of online school work--closing tabs when completing an assignment. It took some time trying to think of how to bring my thoughts to life and to find the right words; but in the end, I composed an amusing little poem.

“Conflicted”, “Tears”, and “Words” are poems I wrote in 10th grade.

The process of writing the work was during a difficult time for me, I put my thoughts and feelings into this work.

This piece is a philosophy told through experiencing sadness.

The piece Seedling is written about my feelings towards the fact that my sister will be moving to college in less than a year.

This is an excerpt from a short story that's based on a scene from a DnD game I was playing with my friends. In the game, it was our first look into the eerie crime sect of the city we were exploring.

The story deals with aspects of mental health especially in regards to people of color in America and there treatment.

My poem describes the pain, the internal and external suffering that is dealt to women in this world. The message that so many have tried to convey, the message that so many refuse to hear.

This piece of writing is a recollection of a moment when I felt the most alive - in the midst of an electric orchestral performance at Davies Symphony Hall. After the performance, I was just positively wired with energy - and I just knew I had to eternalize this.

I often doubt myself and think I am not capable but I know I am. I haven’t wrote in a while simply because sometimes I don’t know how to put everything going on in my head or every emotional I feel onto a piece of paper but I know for a fact i’ll get back to it.

This piece began with a concept that came to me randomly: what if I wrote a flash fiction of someone running away from himself? I then began brainstorming scattered ideas of physical manifestations of mental concepts. These included light and darkness, shadows mirrors, music metaphors, and the landscape. Most of my ideas didn’t make it into the final piece.

My inspiration for writing this piece was my fascination with how the powerful forces of the ocean’s tide and the moon’s pull are connected.

I decided to do thorough and constructive research on slave treatment and write my poem utilizing the analogy. My work in no way encapsulates the pain that black slaves endured, but it does provide a raw image of what slavery looked like in many places for these people.

This piece was inspired by pomegranate seeds I found on the ground. They symbolize life and fertility, but as darkness and blood.