I let someone use my work as their own...

Once upon a time, I let someone use my work as their own. No, not a major author or anything. I was in elementary school when I discovered my love of writing. I developed grammar skills by writing in daily journals at school. My favorite journal entries were the ones where the teacher didn't assign a topic and we got to decide what we wanted to write. We also had writing assignments where we wrote fiction stories. One of these assignments was to write a Halloween story. I was a huge fan of the Goosebumps series at the time, so my mind was filled with ideas that would have easily fit into that show (and book series). I ended up settling on a humorous story and ghosts who had stinky feet. My best friend hadn't had time to write a story, so she asked me to write one for her (which I did). I think if I was able to go back I wouldn't have written the story for her. That was my work and I shouldn't have just given it away. Especially since I think ghostwriting is wrong (in the fiction world).

My writing goals for 2019

2018 has been over for more than a month, and I haven't written anything about my goals. Every year I make goals for myself, such as to lose weight or to study more, but this year I decided to take everything a step forward. This year I made personal goals and writing goals. My personal goals are the boring type. I want to better myself in every way possible. I also made a goal to blog more often and post youtube videos more often. My biggest goals are my writing goals. I plan to have two books published this year. Books that I am already working on. 

The Fortune Teller's Gift will likely be my first release. 

I also plan to market more. I haven't really marketed a book before, and part of me wonders if I can even do it. Sure, I've collected a list of writing hashtags, but that's not all it takes. I have to socialize with people online and in person. I have to build relationships, which I've actually been wanting to do anyway. The only problem is...I'm busy. I work, I write, and I go to college. I don't really have the time for much marketing, which worries me. 

My Creative Writing Nightmare...

I would like to start off by saying that this is my own experience, yours will differ from mine. Even the people in my own class will have a differing experience from mine. My tale starts in 2012, when I thought it wasn’t cool to smile in pictures. 

I decided that I wanted to do something more with my life. I didn’t want to get stuck working retail, so on impulse I went to my local college. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but there were plenty of people to help me. I took the classes they signed me up for and did well in them (I got a 4.0 my first semester). I loved my classes so much that I signed up for a summer class (English 1). I had always done well in English, so I knew that I could pass the course during the summer. I was right, I loved the class. I really enjoyed using my personal experiences to craft essays. I was disappointed when the class was over, but I did sign up for English 2 (with a different professor). By the time my fall semester was ending, I about to move. I wasn’t going to be able to attend the school anymore. I was disappointed, because the teacher who I had taken English 1 with was going to be teaching a creative writing class during the Spring semester. I had never wanted anything more than to take that class, so I signed up online and ordered my books through the online store. I noticed that there was no book assigned to the bookstore for my creative writing class, but I didn’t find that strange. I thought we were just going to focus on writing, but I soon found out that I was wrong. The teacher wanted us to buy this ten-dollar book from amazon. I don’t remember the name of the book, only that I couldn’t buy it at the time because I didn’t have the funds (I was in between jobs and waiting for my aid to come in). The teacher gave us our first assignment, to describe a meeting between a father and daughter who had not seen each other in years. I excelled at the assignment, but that was the last assignment I’d ever excel at in her class. The next assignment she allowed us to write about whatever we wanted, so I wrote about werewolves. My work in progress at the time was a werewolf novel about a werewolf who is imprisoned in an observation cell (I am still planning to publish this in the future).  

I sent her the now cut court room scene, the one where it's decided the young wolf will go be forced to live in the cell. The teacher wrote back saying that it was boring and that she hated werewolves. She later posted an announcement telling us that we were not allowed to write about werewolves, vampires, ghosts, or zombies because those topics bored her. I felt sick to my stomach as I read those words a second time. Wasn't this a creative writing class? Shouldn't I have been able to write about whatever I wanted (within reason)? I stared at the screen in disbelief. How could she have taken that freedom from us? That's when things went from bad to worse. We were never given another writing assignment, instead the ten dollar book came into play. We had to read one of the short stories in the book and write a paragraph about it. I asked the teacher if the bookstore had gotten the book yet, and she said that it was a book they did not carry and would not carry and she gave me the link to buy the book from amazon. I explained to her that my funds hadn't cleared yet and that I was between jobs, but she didn't care. She dropped me from the class as soon as my payment had cleared (which meant that she got paid for me taking the class). I actually cried when I found out what she had done. I didn't know what to do, so I sent several frantic emails to the school asking them for assistance. The emails went unanswered, so I moved on to the better business bureau. I asked that I either allowed back into the class or my money be refunded. I had caused such a fuss that they let me back into the class. My funds cleared at this time, so I purchased the book. It was a thin book, and it certainly didn't look to be worth 10 dollars. I couldn't find it in my amazon purchase history, so I think it may have been a self published book that's no longer for sale (this is an important detail). There were short and dull stories about love, and one about staring out of a window. I completed all of my assignments, eager for a new writing assignment that would never come. My teacher carried a chip on her shoulder because of what had transpired. She ended up giving me a D, because she claimed that I had missed a big assignment during the few days that she had kicked me out of her class. I pleaded with her. I tried to get her to allow me to redo the assignment, but she was cold to me. She ignored all of my emails. The class was over and I had a D because of her. 

This is the part where I do something that I'm not proud of... I googled my teacher's name. I wanted to know more about the person who had forced me out of her class just to give me a D. It turned out that she was a self published author (which makes me wonder if the book she assigned to us was her writing under a pen name). She had just written a book about....ghosts. The woman who had told us not to write about ghosts had written a book about ghosts. I could almost feel my blood boiling as I read the reviews and even used the 'look inside' feature. There was only a handful of reviews, which all seemed to be from friends. I decided to give her a 1 star review (something I wouldn't do now). I wrote that her book was very expensive toilet paper. At the time I felt a small bit better (I needed to vent), but now I regret doing something so immature. The same thing has been done to me (I'll talk about that in a future post). 

Thanks for taking the time to check out my blog. In the future I hope to post about my time attending the Long Ridge Writer's Group, which now has a different name. It might take me awhile to post that blog. I want to try to find all of my paperwork and assignments from that time and share them. If you're curious, I did write Wolf Within while with them. It's linked near the header of my blog.