Creativity can span through a handful of areas including, but not exclusively to art, music, dance, and acting. One of the most difficult area of creativity for a high schooler to engage in is writing outside of school for personal enjoyment. Camryn Brockman, junior, is an aspiring creative writer who puts that notion to the test.
From an early age, Brockman developed a love for writing and putting her ideas into words. When she was in seventh grade, she started tackling her goals head on by writing down the stories she thought of and editing them on her own. After she felt satisfied with her completed work, she published the story on Wattpad, an app for anyone to post their work for free and view the work of others.
“I was a big book reader. I was the classic nerd: I had the braces, and the glasses, and the acne. I just really enjoyed [reading]. I figured that if I liked reading books so much then I might as well give writing one a try,” said Brockman.
When she was in eighth grade, she wanted to post her first book titled: “Eye of the Tiger” on Wattpad. After some hesitation and worry about how others opinions may affect her, she decided to dismiss her concerns and posted it.
“I’m definitely more open. Before I posted my first book online, at first I was really scared to do that because I was worried that everyone was going to judge me but it got to the point where I no longer cared [about the opinion of others]. So in that way, I guess it’s changed my confidence,” said Brockman.
After four years of practice and experience writing stories, she reread her first book and recalled the memory with slight embarrassment. Brockman said, “I went back and reread that story. I was laughing because of how bad it was. It was my first one.”
Because she has to balance her time between school, work, and family, Brockman said that she no longer has the time to write like she used to. Taking every opportunity that she can to write, though, she jots down her ideas whenever she can for enjoyment. She has continued to write for fun rather than for the purpose of posting for public viewing and also chosen to not publish her work anymore because of their personal novelty to her.
“My favorite part is whenever I get a good idea, I’m like ‘ooh I need to write this down before it gets out of my head’. Just that kind of rush [from the excitement],” said Brockman.
She describes her writing style as diverse and flexible to whatever idea she might have in mind and that it can mold to fit whatever genre her ideas fit into. While she enjoys writing, she mentioned that it can be challenging from time to time.
“It’s really hard to put a story together and connect all these things. You always have to keep in mind all the characters personalities. If you write a scene but it doesn’t really flow with the character’s personality, then the story won’t make much sense. There’s just a lot of components to it that you have to remember and keep up with,” said Brockman.
As far as school goes, she says that writing books for fun on her own is very different than the work for English classes and therefore hasn’t really helped her much because of the major difference in what’s expected format and style wise. She explained that her teachers have had an incredible impact on her and have always been more than willing to help her, but she doesn’t think that writing books on her own has necessarily helped her in English class with the exception of enhancing her vocabulary.
Brockman said, “Honestly almost all of my English teachers have been very supportive. Even if I don’t tell them about [how I write books], I usually incorporate parts of the lessons and reflect [what they’ve taught] into my writing.”
While Brockman enjoys writing for fun, she has never had the intentions of becoming an author fulltime in the future. She did mention that she has always wanted to publish a book in print on the side of her profession.
For people who are considering writing/posting a book online, Brockman said, “Just go for it because people are going to judge you either way, so you might as well do whatever makes you happy.”
