Writing: Do low school grades mean anything

You tirelessly work to ensure you have enough similes, metaphors and descriptive language in your school assignment as well as ensuring your SPAG is perfect. You create a piece of creative writing thats well over the minimum word count and you are proud. To your dismay, you find your piece was 'under average' and scored low and you sit in your desk, grasping your worthless piece of writing confused as to what went wrong...

Im unsure if this is a unique experience, however I was all too familiar with this confused disappointment which occurred nearly every time I had an assignment returned. In my adolescence I was an avid-reader and self-identified as a book-worm (before It was a trend on tiktok), I loved word games such as boggle and book-worm and would have perhaps fancied myself as a writer, if not for my terrible grades; which were a constant reminder that I was apparently hopelessly rubbish at writing.

Here I am, a twenty something who in recent years rediscovered her love for reading and am dabbling in writing. I still have that niggling reminder that I was terrible in school but somehow I don't care. I don't currently have a tear-jerking success story that would encourage young writers to ignore adversity however I am choosing to not define my ability by what my younger self could produce. I may still be a terrible writer and certainly have a lot to learn, but thats okay.

Be the verb, and not the noun. If you want to write, write. Dont focus on whether you are a 'good' or 'bad' writer because you will always have critics.

Have a good weekend,

Naomi :)