By: Nyla Louise Rteimeh, Staff Writer
For most, summer is a time to relax and recharge – for Emma Goad, it’s a time to catch up on what she considers to be her biggest passion: reading and writing. Emma is currently a senior at Poly, who spent the summer being swept up in fantasy novels and fiction literature. Her fascination with reading and writing was always there, but she was truly able to pursue it after meeting her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Justice.
The creative freedom Ms. Justice gave her helped her imagination blossom, nurturing her love of writing. “She always allowed me to take as long as I wanted on writing assignments,” Emma explains. When Emma began writing, she felt as if she was looking at the unfiltered version of herself, as Ms. Justice once told her, “the things that [Emma] creates create [her].” Ms. Justice helped foster her passion for writing, but her wild imagination was developed long before 6th grade.
Emma was born the youngest of three; her siblings were over ten years older. Because of all the alone time Emma had, she learned how to entertain herself through her elaborate stories and fairy tales she had created in her head. She elaborates how “spending time alone is my safe space, isolation is comfortable.” Emma specifies that just because she finds comfort in being alone, she is most like herself around others. In more recent years, Emma has met people and made solid friendships with her classmates, and although she has yet to find a community that shares the same interests in person, she has found that community online.
Community is considered to be an important aspect of life for everyone, but this is especially true when you are a writer. Emma points out that “sharing your writing is probably one of the most meaningful things that someone can do.” Having a community to share her work with is crucial. Growing up, Emma acted a lot less like her peers and more like her older siblings. This caused her to feel isolated and struggle with the connection between her and her classmates, making community something she did not discover until later years. Being the youngest of three definitely had its downs, but it had its fair share of positive aspects too, such as inheriting parts of them like their “cool music taste.” Emma describes being the youngest as a “full circle moment” because even though it was originally a struggle, the struggles turned into benefits.
Despite Emma loving what she does, that does not mean she has not faced her struggles with her writing. During the time of slam poems, when all students were made to try their hand at expressing themselves through writing, Emma struggled with the sharing aspect of it all. “The piece I wrote was just too much of myself in it,” she explains. Regardless of the hit her grade took, she doesn’t regret it because of the amount of herself she “left on that document.”
Writing for Emma is also a very therapeutic exercise, specifically because she claims “all writing comes from genuine intention.” Even without writing with the intention of it being therapeutic, for Emma, it always ends up helping because of the thought process behind it. “It’s very beneficial to look at what you’re saying,” Emma explains, “I get to comprehend and see my feelings.” She expresses how it’s a good reflection technique, it helps her look at it from an outside perspective because she can wonder, “what if somebody else said this?”
Before writing, there was her love of reading. Reading is Emma’s biggest passion and favorite way to spend her time; she explains reading as a form of creating. Emma points out how, when reading, “you are creating this picture in your head; you are creating the voices and creating the characters.” Her love of creation has been apparent throughout her whole life, from playing pretend as a kid to the works she writes today.
Writing, for Emma, is not only a creative outlet but a way to discover more about herself. Just as she once created fairy tales to fill her childhood, she now creates stories that help her make sense of navigating these four years of high school. As she writes, she creates her stories, and her stories create her.