I've always loved poetry. Honestly, it's quite a short story. When speaking about their Capstone project last year, someone from the class of 2020 said,

"If you pursue a Capstone project, you have to choose something you love. You'll be miserable if you're not passionate about it."

I'm passionate about writing and art, and this seemed like a great way to pursue self-expression. I've always wanted to be a published author so this project was an easy choice.

My research aspect was difficult to establish. I wanted to find a way to make it easier for future young authors to navigate the publishing process.

Ultimately, Mr. Sussman and I settled on three aspects of the research I'd include for this project.

1) I needed to document the stories of other young authors.

2) I had to construct a "young author's pamphlet guide" to publication.

3) My project needed to list literary magazines and competitions for authors to get published in collections.

You can see more about each of these pieces below.

Especially in quarantine, there were days I would wake up and want literally nothing to do with this project. My biggest obstacle was overcoming the pressure of sticking to a schedule, as there are obviously times when inspiration strikes and when it does not. At times, I would crank out seven poems in three days and then spend the next month without any new content.

This meant one of two things for me: either I needed to establish an editing schedule that I could commit to following, or I needed to finalize pieces I was working on within a week of starting them so that I could assemble my manuscript quickly and efficiently. I ended up choosing the latter, which allowed for more authentic creativity but also more stress. I generally am not someone who likes having strict schedules so I really had to consider the deadline at all points during this project.

Additionally, completing my chapbook virtually was frustrating. Mr. Sussman was my editor throughout my Capstone and it was difficult to have authentic conversations about pieces over Google Doc comments. We resolved this by discussing pieces individually over Zoom, but it was still subpar when compared with in-person discussions about editing.

I very briefly considered quitting right before the "dropout deadline", but decided against it and could not be more happy that I chose to follow through. It's a lot of extra work, and it's taxing, but it's a very rewarding experience to step back and be able to say, "this is mine. I did this."