This is my finished copy! I got an A on it for the assignment, and my teacher is sending it in to the contest in a few days!!

hope it's improved since you last read it! :)

Powerful Words

I would sit in class and wait for the 3:10 bell to ring. I reviewed the day, and penned up my heated emotions. It was another bad day at school where people treated me horribly. They ignored or teased me- it depended on who it was. When the bell finally rang, I would leave school to go home. I would get home and release all my anger by screaming inside my house. I figured that nobody would hear me.

This used to be a normal routine for me. However, I did control my anger once I got tired of the screaming. I either read a book or wrote poetry. I found a comfort within the written word.

Reading a book helped me get off the subject of “me”. I read and entered the world- and life- of somebody else. I experienced the moods of the characters and the tone the author was writing with. This always helped me forget about my problems for the time being. Reading mystery stories usually got my mind focused on the book to figure out the problem before the characters; I forgot all about the kids that had hurt me. Sometimes I even related to situations the characters were going through and I learned how to deal with my own situations better. In middle school, I read some Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul books that helped me with some friendship issues.

Most of the time I wrote poetry, but I made several attempts to write short stories. Often I just grabbed a pencil and paper and let the words flow from my head to my hand and ended up writing poems. My poems were solely based on the strong emotions I had at the time, such as anger and sadness; writing them down helped me get over them quicker. Other times, when I was in a more creative mood, I wrote short stories and put my characters through drastic situations, and usually I allowed them to have the happy endings I wished I could have had with my own situations. Writing those stories helped me see how silly my “horrible” situations were and realized everything could be worse; and I tended to be more relieved after writing about it and rereading what I wrote.

Reading and writing have been beneficial for me throughout my teenage life. I have loved reading since I was little. I discovered writing when I was in seventh or eighth grade when school days were becoming unbearable. Looking back on the times when I read or wrote the most, I realize that it helped me in so many ways. Therefore, I strongly believe that written words have the power to comfort anyone in need of it, and I still read or write when I feel overwhelmed.