As of writing this blog I’m up to 17,976 words on my thesis! It’s already come further than I expected, so WOO! I’ll be at Linfield for a speech tournament until Sunday but I wanted to give you a blog, so, yeah.
The most interesting part of writing this thesis has been returning to this period of my life (my last semester of high school) and realizing how far I’ve come. A lot of this book is taking from actual blog posts and poems and such, some of which was written much later, and it’s interesting the shift in tone. For example, I use my old If I Was Valedictorian blog at one point on my character’s “public” blog, and then on her private blog my intent was to post my newer poem regarding the same topic as a contrast. But I realized that the poem, because it was written so far removed from the situation, is too mature for my character at this point in her life. It’s on the same topic, yes, and it contains a lot of the same elements, but it amounts to so much more.
Instead of just being angry, my poem recognizes that life goes on and people grow up to defy expectations. It’s hopeful, and that’s not something I, or my character, was at that point. So my new plan is to have her post the beginning of the poem (up to the “I want to tell you what I have learned” line), because it sounds just as angry as the original blog did, but then later on in the book I want her to finish the poem to prove growth. Fun, eh?
But seriously, I am glad I didn’t attempt to write this book two years ago. Maybe the supporting characters would have been truer to form and maybe I’d be able to remember more details, but I would have been breaking down constantly. I tried to write a book about my experiences with high school debate during my freshman year of college but had to stop due to the crippling panic attacks. This period of my life was not, by any means, fun.
I have the years on my side this time, though. I’m no longer plagued by these experiences, and I can finally look at them unbiased to find the story underneath. It took a while, but I am now, after long last, in a place where I can accept the tragedy that was my last semester in high school and move on. I have far more important things to be upset about.
