Most Interesting Writing

     I have written enough in school and on my own that thinking of my reactions to my own writing is a bit of a challenge nowadays. However, out of the work that I can remember, my short story in 7th grade stands out.

     A bit of background: in 7th grade, my English teacher taught a unit on short stories. We read The Necklace, The Lottery, The Tell-Tale Heart, and many others, and discussed their elements, plot arcs, and characterization. To finish off the unit, we each had to write a seven-to-ten page short story, and as you may have guessed by this point, this is the piece of writing that I am referring to.

     Unlike most things I write, which I can usually sort by whatever had been read recently, and therefore heavily influenced by, I'm not entirely sure where my story came from. It featured a 14-year-old girl named Aura, her linebacker older brother, her rather average parents, their infant son, and very little else. My entire short story literally took place throughout the course of one day inside a rather ordinary house. The country that the house was in, which I took great pains to avoid identifying, was about to be bombed back into the Stone Age by a similarly unidentified aggressor.

     Most of my short story, I realized now, consisted of various ways my protagonist attempted to distract herself from the approaching bombs. Morbid? Definitely. Suspenseful? Occasionally, which was why I enjoyed writing the story. The tension and the constant thought that in a few hours, everything that the characters were seeing would be blown to ashes made the writing process entertaining. And the little touches that I tried to add (a computer game, her older brother's football injury, the doting parents) made the story of better quality than most things I had written up until that point.

     At the same time, my writing was nowhere near perfect. One of the parts that I take the most issue with is my attempt at some sort of climax for the story, which ended up being rather flat and dull. My attempts to avoid the aggressor country and the bombed country verged on comical. The ending also was very vague, and the question I received most from those who read it was "Did they die?" followed extremely closely by "Why didn't you kill them?" Still, overall, I consider my 7th grade short story my best piece of writing.