My name is Anthony Sanes and I’m a reader/writer.

As a reader I had a tough time starting out. When I was young, reading was very difficult. I almost got kept back in the first grade because of my reading capabilities. Back then I cared little about reading because it didn’t interest me. It wasn’t until a year later in the fourth grade that i seriously got into reading. I went form below average to reading at a high school level before entering middle school. (I didn’t take extra classes or receive extra help even though my mother tried her hardest). What really got me into reading was the content.

In an effort to help my reading abilities, my father took me to the library regularly to find book that sparked my interest. Eventually I came across a book titled “The Last Apprentice” by Joseph Delaney. This is where I found my love for action and adventure books. I currently own ten out of the thirteen books written in this series and the sub series “The Wardstone Chronicles”. I brought it home and my mother thought I would never finish it within the 2 weeks. To her disbelief I finished it in a week. At the time she would never believe that I read a book above 100 pages never mind 350 pages. Looking back at it now, I’m happy I found the book and I’m glad it had the effect on me that it did.

As your reading this your probably wondering why I’m blabbing about a children’s book. Well this is where that “book” effects who I am as a writer. And the first place to talk about my writing would be middle school.

Going into middle school was very easy for me. I didn’t notice it at the time but it was because of that book, and all the others that came after it. They all sparked my inspiration and creativity. These books gave me the tools I needed to write my creative stories . My teacher, Ms. McCaughey, had the class do a lot of creative writing. Anything you wanted to write about (as long it stuck to the guidelines/moral of the assignment) was fair game, and I made sure to take advantage of that. A creative writing story about friendship? Ok. Turn that into a story about a couple of friends that get locked in a mall overnight and decide to reap havoc. She said it was creative all right, and it still followed the syllabus.

I could only use the form of creative writing for so long. As I entered into high school, the opportunities were still there. They just weren’t as abundant. Although I did have some fun with certain assignments I can still recall from my Honors English III in my Junior year, we had to read “Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales”. After completing it, there were a variety of different assignments they we could choose from that related to the stories. Of course I chose to recreate the Canterbury Tales into my own version. Even though I know that I chose a childish assignment, I still got a 94 as a midterm grade, and she kept the paper to use as a reference for her other classes. If only I had peer edited more I probably could have bumped that up to a 100. I still have lots of weaknesses such as grammar every so often and I tend to run off topic, but I have the creativity to enhance my writing.

I’ve gone well over the 250 word minimum, and ranted about my childhood for quite a while, but I did get to show off my creativity which I think is the most exciting part of any story. Creativity can bring out the best qualities in a person. After all, its all about how creative your willing to get.