By Liz Wiles and Vanessa Sanchez
Liz says, “Despite attending Minarets in O’Neals since freshman year, when I reached sophomore year, I chose the elective of Creative Writing on the basis of my love for writing and yearning to merge my passion with my academic life, and entered the first class period hoping to add to my current knowledge of writing and digital publishing. Utilizing the opportunity to share my thoughts in an organized structure, I was granted an entire class-worth of constructive criticism on a short story I compiled.
“We critiqued each student’s story thoroughly and provided both factual and preferred alterations to improve and heighten the skills of our peers.
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One of those peers, in specific, is my closest friend attending Minarets and the co-author of this review, Vanessa Sanchez. We had the opportunity to work on projects together, assisting one another in our writing ventures and making sure we reached the pinnacle of our individual writing abilities. Not only participating in the creating of stories or reviews, we also spent time working with photo prompts and studied different alterations an author can make to her writing.
“In Minarets elective of Creative Writing, I have broadened my skills as an author and had many opportunities, along with a freedom I would not have received at any other school.”
Vanessa says, “I was new to Minarets and found I was interested in the Creative Writing class they had to offer. The school I came from my freshmen year did not offer any sort of Creative Writing nor Digital Publishing elective, but rather classic electives like art, leadership, band, etcetera.
“So, in turn, I was excited to hear of the opportunity to try something different. The first day of Creative Writing at Minarets gave me a happy energy that let me know this was going to be a good class and would be worth all the effort I would put into it.
“The teacher, Michael Vaughan, gave me determination to finish certain assignments that I struggled with and helped me through them. Vaughan had faith in me throughout the year despite my not believing that this class would be my favorite class. How would I have known? Others school didn’t offer it!
“Creative Writing at Minarets taught me different ways to make stories fun and exciting. In my personal opinion, building characters is the most interesting topic to learn. You can insert beliefs and viewpoints into people you created all your own and let your imagination run wild, as some will say.”
Liz Wiles and Vanessa Sanchez are Minarets students enrolled in Digital and Creative Writing
