As sophomore year begins and my friends and I have a year of experience at creative writing, a lot of us have begun to write novels. This is the goal of many writers, but it’s often never reached, or for us, reached only in senior year, when we have to write our thesis. I started writing my novel this summer, then forgot about it for a couple months, and I’m only now coming back to it because so many of my friends are working on similar projects.

Having a group of writer friends all trying to achieve the dream is really helpful when I’m writing. We’ve all decided to form a sort of writer support group, which is really just planning writing days, promising to edit each other’s novels once they’re in good enough shape to be seen by the public,  and complaining about the menaces of our projects together. We try to schedule days where we all clear our schedule and write in silence together, which sounds weird, but it works, I swear. Some of my most productive days have stemmed from setting aside all this time and knowing my friends will eliminate any distractions until I’m writing, as I would for them. It’s also fairly common for one of us to ask each other random questions that only make sense when you consider the genres of our projects (dystopian, horror, and some sort of historical fantasy, I believe). Like, a couple of months ago, Aubrey asked if we all go on a trip to Glen Park together so he could find the best place in the park to kill a monster. Or, a few weeks ago, I asked Tanner to help me figure out the best way to injure a character during a protest in an unfortunately-not-really-that-far-future dystopian take on San Francisco. It’s also great when I’m so done with writing, because chances are someone else is too, and then we can commiserate. Generally, having friends that are writing is the best when one decides to embark on a mystical, frequently discussed journey such as novel writing, and I’m so grateful that I’ve found all these wonderful writers in Creative Writing.

Creative Writing has helped me grow as a person and a writer. Creative Writing may seem like a “boring” or “uninteresting” department out of all of them in SOTA but I promise you that this department will blow your mind. This department is the reason why I come out of bed in the morning because nobody judges, nobody truly cares about how you look, speak, think, or just how you express yourself. This place helped me overcome my fear of sharing my work to others and being around new people. Creative Writing helped me so much as a writer alongside as a person, helping me with new techniques and how to think more about not what I’m writing, but how people will interpret it.

Creating Writing has such a great and helpful community that it doesn’t feel like a classroom, but just a big hang out group that learns new things about each other and how we express ourselves. Our writing is like reading a language you already know but in a different way, each story or poem taking us into a different world inside each other’s minds and showing people how we operate behind our flesh and bones. 

SOTA is not just any normal high school, it’s a place where you could laugh and make memories all in one building, and our department makes those memories come to life and stick with us until we graduate.

Creative Writing is more than just a writing class, it’s literature as a whole, and it has so much more to offer than paper and pencils, it offers community, respect, and love for one another that would make cupid proud.  Even if someone didn’t understand or like literature, Creative Writing would change your mind.ative Writing has helped me grow as a person and a writer. Creative Writing may seem like a “boring” or “uninteresting” department out of all of them in SOTA but I promise you that this department will blow your mind. This department is the reason why I come out of bed in the morning because nobody judges, nobody truly cares about how you look, speak, think, or just how you express yourself. This place helped me overcome my fear of sharing my work to others and being around new people. Creative Writing helped me so much as a writer alongside as a person, helping me with new techniques and how to think more about not what I’m writing, but how people will interpret it. 

Creating Writing has such a great and helpful community that it doesn’t feel like a classroom, but just a big hang out group that learns new things about each other and how we express ourselves. Our writing is like reading a language you already know but in a different way, each story or poem taking us into a different world inside each other’s minds and showing people how we operate behind our flesh and bones. 

SOTA is not just any normal high school, it’s a place where you could laugh and make memories all in one building, and our department makes those memories come to life and stick with us until we graduate.

Creative Writing is more than just a writing class, it’s literature as a whole, and it has so much more to offer than paper and pencils, it offers community, respect, and love for one another that would make cupid proud.  Even if someone didn’t understand or like literature, Creative Writing would change your mind.

Before joining Creative Writing, my experience in different formats of writing was very dim. I knew there were other types of writing out there and I wanted to know the beauty of them. You see, writing has always been and always will be a passion of mine. It’s been a way of expressing myself and my thoughts, and how those thoughts define me. When I joined Creative Writing, I thought we would come into class and just write. I didn’t realize all of the different texts, authors, and poems that we would be analyzing. It almost felt like a culture shock, and I loved it. Not only did I adore the different types of writing that we were analyzing, but I also admired the ones behind these writings and poems. And don’t even get me started on the writing prompts we are given, amazing! These prompts helped me open my mind to all sorts of ideas and how I can incorporate those ideas into my writing. Creative Writing really helped me unlock a door in my mind that was so difficult to unlock at first, and I love it. It also opened me up to accept more criticism when it came to my writing. It helped me understand how other people interpreted my writing and what it meant to them. Not only that, but the people in the CW department are incredibly welcoming and unique. They all have their distinct way of writing that makes them, them, and I admire it so much. Hearing their writing and analyzing also helps me grow inspiration for  my own writing and how I want to make it distinctly, me. Although I haven’t been in CW for super long, it is one of the best environments that I’ve been in. It has helped me in so many different ways, like my confidence, my writing, and how I express myself in my writing. All in all, CW has become a space where I feel like I can convey my emotions and my ideas into writing, and get positive feedback on it.

The senior thesis process is a long, but invigorating process. It requires a lot and it needs your attention. The senior thesis is a work we pull together, both old and new things we write. Be it fiction, poetry, screenplay or playwriting, you choose some that speaks to you and take it to the end. You have to be a stickler for it, you have to be sure and proud of it because it’s something you’re going to work on the whole year and your main goal for your senior year in Creative Writing. Personally, I chose poetry. It was something that did not resonate with me at the beginning, but as soon found out it was a hidden gem. I started over the summer, taking inspiration from everything around me and from the places I traveled to. I played with themes and forms of writing, looking at how I changed to meet what I had envisioned when I first heard about a senior thesis. It can sometimes feel forced, because you have deadlines and other things going on but once you find a good flow it gets easy. 

Like I said, it requires a lot of you, but it also requires peers around you. Friends and family. You rely on them to give you feedback and give you observations you were oblivious to. You’re invested in what you’re writing and what your peers are writing. We get spaces to discuss and challenge each other. And while this is very intimate thing, it knits stronger bonds between us, we get to know each other deeper. But there is no time when you cannot access the support system we have. There is lots of help in the process, so you’re never alone!

To finalize the second week of school, The Creative Writing Department went on a field trip to the SF MOMA. We were assigned to find a piece we related to, and to write a poem inspired by it- So we drifted through the Muni downtown, and dispersed throughout the museum, inspecting each piece through our own interpretation. The Freshman had come up with the plan to walk around downtown afterwards, get boba, maybe go to Blick Art Supplies. So as soon as everyone had relocated themselves to the museum entrance, we started to ramble our way to the nearby park. Little to our knowledge, a colossal Pokemon convention had sprung into full action, taking downtown into its arms. So we held onto each other’s backpacks, leading a string of writers through a crowd of Pokemon enthusiasts, and eventually made our way to the park. We settled down under an empty play structure, bags outsprawled across the ground, eating stale popcorn. Over the break, we had all worked religiously over our summer homework, and in the middle of a Pokémon convention downtown, the only plausible thing to do was to read each other our summer poems. So one by one we each read out loud our stories, our poems, and each time concluded in an applause of gratification, of community. We even attracted an audience, consisting of a 9 year old named Cashmere who wanted to spend his time in the park listening to poetry. 

In Creative Writing, you can imagine how much everyone loves what they do. Whether you’re in the Department classroom, on the Muni, or even in the middle of a Pokemon convention, you’ll never stop thinking like a writer. As I now type this at my bathroom sink whilst brushing my teeth, I reference Roland Barthes, “Writers are on holiday, but their muse is awake.”

Every day in the Creative Writing classroom, underneath the gentle patter of rain or swish of wind outside, the low hum of saxophones from the Conservatory Music department across the field, and one of our own daring voices reading out poetry loud and clear, a far more subtle sound can be heard. The air becomes alive with hundreds of snaps. It’s a sound I’ve grown to love over the past few weeks, but I’m afraid I’ve already begun to take it for granted.

Here in CW, we use snapping as a way to show admiration for or resonation with a particular line or phrase in the writing that’s being shared aloud. This is a longstanding tradition within the department. Rather than interrupting the reader, snapping allows us to communicate praise without taking away from the flow of the writing. And even though I’ve only been in CW for just over a month, I can say with certainty that hearing a resounding snap go around the room after a line of your poem is one of the best feelings in the world. I relish that in the way theater kids love hearty applause. It reminds me again and again that it’s in CW where I belong—a classroom full of people who understand a love for writing.

I think it all goes to show the strong community that the students of this remarkable department have built up over the years. We’re constantly uplifting each other, treating each poem as the beautiful and unique artwork it is, while helping each other develop our craft. I already can’t count how many times somebody’s heard that I’m in Creative Writing and followed up immediately with an expression of disdain and the inevitable “So what do you do… sit down and write for two hours?” And I can never fully explain to them because they just don’t get it. The bonds we forge in CW are so special that the first four weeks of every year are dedicated community weeks in which the new freshmen learn how to lift up and laugh with and be vulnerable to their new classmates. Every student gets assigned a buddy, an older or younger classmate to act as a mentor, a collaborator, and a friend. As an introvert, this scared me at first, but I know now that there is nothing to be afraid of. Older buddies don’t see it as a responsibility, but as a privilege, and it helps you build connections across grade levels.

CW is truly the teenage fairytale, that idyllic place where you can be your authentic self, an archetype that is so often separate from reality. It doesn’t matter if you have some unusual hobby that drains your free time and wallet in equal measure, or are terribly addicted to some specific kind of energy drink. You are weird, and you’re a writer, and best of all, you’re here where you belong in a room full of forty other weird writers.

I, however, harbor a dark secret: I can’t snap. At first, of course, it was incredibly disappointing that I couldn’t engage with such an incredible tradition. Did this mean that I was unable to show my love and recognition of my classmates’ poems? Would I look self-centered? But apparently I wasn’t the only one who had this problem, and as always, CW adapted to us. Emily, our department head, was able to come up with a special soft knock to our desks we could use as a substitute for snapping. It’s not quite the real thing—to be honest, it always sounds like someone’s at the door—but the mere fact that it was created especially for us is a testament to the fact that nothing can get in the way of the Creative Writing community. 

I may not be qualified to say this, but I truly think CW has created something special that can’t quite be found when it comes to some of the other arts at SOTA. Despite a much larger grade of incoming freshmen than ever before, we’ve maintained that palpable sense of closeness that has been present in the Creative Writing classroom since the first day. And I feel confident we won’t lose it as the school expands over the next four years. When the next class of freshman shows up in the fall, all nervous smiles and untouched notebooks, I’ll be there, snapping for them. Or at least knocking my hand against the table for the whole world to hear.

I think Creative Writing has ruined the color yellow for me. Not because I suddenly don’t like the color now that I’ve joined the department. But now I can’t look at it without thinking about Creative Writing. It could be a taxi on the street, the light at an intersection, even the pencil I use to take notes in my Physics class. A person wearing yellow? Obviously a secret CW enthusiast. Somehow, I always end up with the same thought. I suppose that’s what happens when you spend so much time surrounded by something. Many things begin to become associated without you realizing. A chair becomes someone’s spot. A table becomes the table. And yellow becomes Creative Writing.

And of course, this isn’t a bad thing. If anything, it makes the boring bits of my day so much more fun. I could be sitting in class, staring at my chipped yellow nail polish and remember the most interesting conversation I had with the other CW students the other day. Now, I don’t go around everyday totally consumed by writing. The first day of school didn’t flip a switch that caused me to be completely fixated solely on writing. There’s plenty of time when I’m not, but it does tend to pop up, especially when there’s nothing even remotely related to CW happening. 

I started noticing how much yellow there actually is once I began associating it with the department. Apparently, it’s been following me around this whole time. I just didn’t have a reason to properly see it before. Maybe that’s the part that seems strange to me. Nothing about the color has changed. A traffic light is still just a traffic light, and my pencil is still just a pencil. It’s still yellow, a color I didn’t mind but had no real reason to think about. 

Really though, I don’t think I can ever look at yellow the same again, which is a little ridiculous, but that’s why I love Creative Writing so much.