I was a great writer, once. No matter which grade or school I attended, teachers told me that I had a talent for words. My reading skills were far ahead of my age. My vocabulary was prodigious. My papers were littered with stars and vivid blue-ink 100’s. In high school and during my early college career, people would seek me out for help with their work, thinking me to be some rhetorical sage.

My habits of reading and writing came largely out of my own shyness. Books were a salve to my battered self-consciousness and bruising home life. I didn’t know why I enjoyed to read so much, or why writing mattered so much to me. I just knew they made me forget how to feel sad for a little while. In high school, I began to write more of my own stories. For class, with my best friend, and for myself. I collected notebooks, hoping that I’d be struck with some divine obsession like a true artist, driven by my suffering and angst. The little journals are still mostly blank, scattered in my closet and each with a few pages covered in obscene doodles and the occasional one-liner.

I must admit, Coastal Carolina University wasn’t my first choice for college. It was only on my application list . I’d lived in Myrtle Beach for

I write, I learn, and as I learn, I write better. I know there is never an end to the revisions of one's work, much like there is no end to the revisions one can make to one's self.

Now I'm not a great writer. I'm just a writer.