Mr. Preston's Creative Writing Club

Stories have been a constant and prominent part of my life. Writing stories, however had always been an impossible challenge, until I met Mr. Preston. He was slim man, about five-foot seven, with sparse buzzed white hair and a cleanly trimmed and shaven silvery beard. He became my mentor at Manlius Pebble Hill, supporting me in every endeavor, nagging me about my slowly slipping math grades, but most importantly teaching me how to write. I had gone to writing camps, joined writing clubs, even took a creative writing seminar, but I still struggled to write. I came into Mr. Preston's Creative Writing class much too confident. I always received high grades in English, and grew up with consistent praise on my creativity and imagination. However in this class, all of my successes paled in comparison to the expectations set for an adult writer. In particular, everything I said or wrote was crude in comparison to Mr. Preston’s expectations. When Mr. Preston spoke every word was chosen with care, and were stringed sweetly together in a sentence to announce anything with melody and intellect. He set the example for the writer I dreamed of being.

Two poems, twelves lines or more each. Easy. But, I could not even do that. I turned in one poem, which I remember nothing of except that I horrifically misused the world squelching, and my other poem was written ten minutes before class began and was about eight lines too short. My second poem was less of an embarrassment than the first. I wrote it so quickly I left no time to edit or doubt what I had put down, and because of that it felt more honest, and less awkward than my longer poem. It still was a failure. I wanted to be the brightest star in that classroom. I felt embarrassed. I disappointed myself, and lost my first chance to impress Mr.