Recently, I came across something in my house that I thought I'd gotten rid of a long time ago.

See, it's like this.

I first started writing in middle school, usually original fiction and some fanfiction. Back then, I used to write on paper, and I literally had notebooks upon notebooks of random short stories and bits of long stories. Right after middle school (8th grade), my family moved to another state. During the move, I trashed all of my notebooks except for two.

A few days ago, I was looking for some old pictures with my mom and I came across a big cardboard box. Inside, I found all of the notebooks that I had thought I'd gotten rid of. It turned out that my mother had dug them out of the trash and kept them.

To be honest, I'm a little annoyed. I threw them away because I felt like I was ready to move on, to elevate my writing to another level. She keeps saying that one day, I'd want to see them again but I really don't. I'm probably going to trash them again ASAP and I feel like she should respect my decision.

The point is, I decided to read them again before wiping them off the face of this earth forever and ever and I've noticed a few things.

Back then, I didn't know the difference between you’re and your. I used too much dialogue, and had the most cliched plots known to man. My characters were two dimensional, and had ridiculous backgrounds. For some reason, the female characters were all smart, rich, and beautiful. They lived in mansions, and had famous parents and NFL player brothers. I also seemed unable to finish a single story. I'd flit back and forth between scenes in random plotlines, never getting far in one. The reason, I've come to discover, is because of the way I made my main characters. Because my leads were always the epitome of perfection, something that I can never achieve, I didn’t feel connected to them.

The moral of this story is two fold.

One, don't write about perfection. If the character needs to be rich, smart, and beautiful, let there be some personality flaws or quirky traits. (白富美 can always be super weird or something.)

The second important thing to take from this is the big one: DON'T EVER GIVE UP. If you guys read some of the stuff I found in these notebooks, you would probably say it's ty. The point is that I improved because I kept writing. If you're not too happy with your writing level, that does not mean you should stop. 

One thing that really helped me improve my own writing is reading. By reading, I mean books, rather than fanfiction. When I see people who don't even know how to use quotation marks correctly, it really confuses me because it makes me wonder if they own a ing book. Learn by example.

I found Twilight fanfiction omg ewww gross what stawp