an ode to my bad writing

    I often times feel like a middle schooler clutching a god awful breakup poem in a room full of the colligate equivalent of Shakespeare. 

    The first official thing I ever wrote of my own accord was sophomore year. 

    Before then, I would have a moment of complete creative capability for about two mediocre song lyrics, look at the aftermath of my glittery pen to page- then angrily close my notebook. 

    Sophomore year, I decided to submit my own play to the Walter Trumbauer Festival. I would spend my entire life saving ($463) to recover that 14-page, comic-sans-covered masterpiece. 

    I did not know how to write a play. All I did know, however, is that I was extremely competitive. And was pretentious. In a sick attempt to create a modern-day Hamlet, I definitely ripped off Don't Worry Darling and poorly constructed this grandiose one act play. I think, at least. I honestly do not remember a single line out of that play. I remember the basic idea of it: girl trapped, piano, she plays notes, memories appear, illusion starts breaking, she escapes? (It's fully a poor man's Don't Worry Darling.)

   As pathetic as this sounds,  I was so confused on how to write that I spent $73 on Amazon "How to" books for writing.

    I brought four different colored highlighters and two different sticky notes to the high school's library. 

    Innovation center. I used to talk to the librarians every day (Oh my god) and would constantly get corrected when I addressed the space as the library. The innovation center held two different Nintendo Switches, board games, Lego sets, and a (not) well hidden PlayStation. And a very dusty set of books. 

    I wrote all of my play on my school-issued Google Doc account. Unbeknownst to me, your school-issued account gets completely deleted the night of graduation. And sadly for all of us right now, while I was mentally prepping to hobble across the stage in five inch, ugly black stilettos, I did not remember my 14-page play that hadn't been opened since I was a bus rider.    

    I took a creative writing class my freshman year. I remember walking into that class absolutely horrified- only thinking about the district Trumbauer judges saying scene 6 didn't make any sense. Also how I didn't win. And I became even more horrified when someone asked if they could use a typewriter for their assignments. I didn't have a typewriter. I only had Word. And a highlighter at the bottom of my backpack.

   And some days I look back at my random submissions for that class and cringe at the contents. And some days I look back at this blog and secretly delete things and pray that no one read it. But I think I can appreciate my bad writing. I am okay with my basic sentences and my boring, redundant structure. And I have come to terms that anyone can open this blog and think I should switch my major to something far, far away from English.  I can deal with the fact that my writing may not be compared to that of a Shakespearean successor. I am just glad I am writing. 

    I do not love stealing Don't Worry Darling's plot. But I do love my bad writing. 

-A.K. (a letterboxd user that logged Don't Worry Darling at a 2.5)