The bell sounds, marking the cessation of the final moments of the period. Books slam shut with dull thuds, creating small gusts of wind which lift the loose papers from the desktop and tosses them onto the tile floor. Chatter floods through the hallways and carries into the classroom where a group of students scramble to scrounge their belongings and exit the enclosed room. As the frenzied mass rushes the closed door the teacher shouts out the day�s assignment and a reminder of the paper that is due the next day. Silent curses are mumbled and grumbled by those who had either forgotten about the paper, or had simply put off starting it until that night. Last to leave, I calmly lift my books up from the desk as I walk out the door, silently reprimanding my lazy ways.

The day goes by, period by period as I mentally struggle over an idea for the paper that I am yet to begin. Millions of thoughts and topics burst into my head, each one being pondered over thoroughly and then dismissed as inadequate material for the required topic. Sports, math, science, games, war, life, death, school, homework, family; each and every broad and specific category getting sifted through for the perfect idea in order to write a wonderful paper. After countless hours and minutes throughout the remainder of the school day I still have no idea of what I would write about later that night. What had once been the meager task of selecting a topic to write a personal narrative essay paper on soon evolves into a stressful realization of how little time I truly have to get the idea and write a decent paper. By the time I get home from school the whole project went from bad to worse. I have a little over six hours to come up with an idea and get the paper typed before I would have to go to sleep for the night and the computer would be shut down. I know I have to think fast.

About an hour later an idea finally hits me: writing. It seems logical enough at the time, and it helps to lower the level of stress I have developed. So with that idea in mind I sit down to type up a decent paper, or at least try to. I know it should not have been a difficult task, since I love writing and I have typed up countless papers and reports on various topics, but for some reason this one wants to be troublesome and elusive. Within an hour and a half I have managed to piece together what I feel is an alright paper, but not of the usual quality I typically produce. Given no other choice though, I reluctantly print it off and hand it in the next day in class, opting not to read aloud. As luck would have it, after class my teacher asks me if I would read my paper aloud the next day since we have run out of time. I could do nothing but hesitantly say yes to the proposition, since it would gain me a much needed five points in exchange for humiliation and embarrassment. I now regret agreeing to that.

My reading goes by smoothly, but I know it is utterly horrid work. I have finally struck out, misfiring for once after all those wonderful and brilliant papers I have produced. A sudden realization dawns on me, which helps me to lower how much I am fretting the grade I will get. We all mess up at one time or another, and it happens to the best of us. I should not always expect for anything that deals with writing to be simple and easy to do. But even knowing and understanding that does not help me vent out all the anger and frustration that this predicament has given me. Thankfully, as luck would have it, our teacher is a generous teacher and not some evil tyrant who finds joy in seeing others squirm under his mighty power, so we are granted the chance to correct our errors in our papers. This is an opportunity I had sought, and from that comes this, a revision to the crappiness of the old one, with a few major additions and revisions that I feel will help the overall quality of the paper and get me a better grade than the old one would have gotten.

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Writing is found and used in many different things. It gives us ways of venting our frustrations or sharing our grievances with others. We can escape the troubles of the world and travel into a realm of fantasy. We seek out writings when we need advice or help on some things, especially with our new technologies that are found in the world today. Our lives as we know them today would be forever changed without writing but, just as with all things in the world today, it is a double-edged sword that has its benefits as well as its hindrances. It can lighten our mood with stories of happiness and heroisms, or it can darken it through tales of sadness and tragedy. Writing can be an outlet for our stresses where we can release the pressures placed upon us, or it can be the epicenter of anger and frustration.

As it was shown in the narrative tale above, the smallest of hills can be the biggest of mountains, even for skilled and talented writers. The most difficult part of writing may be getting started, since anything and everything must have a beginning, and to begin you must first have an idea; however that does not always hold true since a lot of times the problems arise in other areas after a beginning has been developed and written. Another major bump on the road of writing is genre. For someone who is familiar with writing and does so often, this is an easy task to get by, but not everyone knows what they like to write. With so many different unique genres to write in, each involving different style and techniques, a new and inexperienced writer could easily get swept up into the vast ocean of possibilities and drown.

It seems that the most difficult thing for me to write is an essay or story where it has to fit under specific guidelines, such as being a personal narrative essay. I feel it restricts the ability for creativity to flow freely into a wonderfully written idea. If someone tells me to write a story, I can write them a story. If they tell me to write a paper on the Civil War, I can write them a paper on the Civil War without any problem. It is when something like: �It has to be an extended metaphor� is added to the project that I may come across that bump in the road which can lead to distress and aggravation. The more open-ended the paper can be usually has a direct correlation with the quality and creativeness of the work that I turn in. Small things like using strong imagery or writing it in a certain perspective, like 3rd person, hardly phase my ability to get a magnificent final product, since they are only minor additions which do not alter any ideas I may have developing because they can easily be worked into a final draft.

Despite the potential downfalls that writing may have in store I still feel that it is a worthwhile activity since it may, over a period of time, expand the boundaries of one�s mind to an extent that nothing else may be able to. So for any aspiring writers out there, stick with it through the think and the thin, since the hardest part is finding your own equilibrium in writing, but then all should get easier from there on. Don�t let all those little bumps along the path keep you down and success may come all in due time, and you will hopefully be glad that you toughed it out until the end because the ability to write is a marvelous gift.

Words flow from the pen like water rushing down a waterfall; Ideas filtered onto paper from the imaginative depths of the mind, Transmuting thoughts and feelings into poetic verse. Meaningless phrases meld together to form powerful statements, All coming together to portray the writer�s views And give the poem life. ~David Wiley