I had a fantastic time at the Creative Writing Workshops at Writopia. It spent my time writing a new story and continuing a previous one. I had instructors who helped guide me when I was stuck or needed ideas. I was able to further my plot and improve the build up of my characters. I wrote more of my story than I thought I would be able to. I worked on many collaborative pieces with the other writers at the workshop. I met a girl who helped me improve my writing skills. For example, she helped me work on my tenses. I learned that, when writing a story it is okay to include "fluff" or unnecessary details as you are writing because you can always go back and revise the parts that you don't need. My instructor also taught me the different forms to write in (first person, third person, etc.) and how to use them to my advantage. I was also very grateful that my instructors used their time to give me feedback and suggestions on my writing piece. I learned different exercises that helped me improve my writing when I was stuck. One exercise that we did was we made the color of our documents white and our instructor gave us topic to write about for about 1 minute and we had to write about anything and everything that came to mind. At the end we would change the font color to black to be able to see what we wrote. It was funny to see how many spelling mistakes we made, but on the other hand it helped get our minds flowing. Another activity that we did was we were given a topic and we had to write any word that we thought of that was related to the topic. After we made our list of words, we had to write a poem about the topic without using the word. I admit it was pretty difficult to write, but it made you think of other synonyms or other ways to describe events and objects. I also learned to feel confident with sharing my writing out loud because we were encouraged to share parts of our pieces. I learned many things this summer at Writopia and I hope the lessons and skills that I have learned take me far.

I am going to be participating in the Creative Writing Workshops this summer. I am really excited to be joining the program because it will give me the time to write. I usually am so busy with school and other activities that I can never find the time to just sit and write. I love to write because it helps me vent, think about things in different point of views, or just get creative and create crazy stories! I feel that in school, there aren't many opportunities to get creative, so, for me, writing outside of school is the only way to do so. I think that this program will help me develop my ideas and finish the stories that I have started.

I am looking forward to working with other people my age and sharing ideas and advice with one another. I chose this program because I have loved writing ever since the eighth grade, and I constantly think of little poems or short story ideas. I believe that participating in this program will help me decide on whether or not I want to major in Creative Writing when I grow up or not.