I flick through my perfectly organized display folder for English, and grin at my excellent results and praise from my English teacher, Miss Maple, on all my assignments. Then my gaze falls on our latest assignment and my smile turns into a downright scowl. My name’s Audrey Johnson and my current English assignment is making me go CRAZY!
I sit here at my desk with my pens lined up carefully next to a blank piece of paper, tapping my fingers impatiently and glaring at the ceiling. Think, think, THINK! I was begging myself to come up with something, with my head in my hands. I’ve never had to do this before; inspiration usually just sparks right away but with this task I might as well die of thinking.
My door cracks open. I can tell who it is without looking up, it’s my mum. She always wears J’adore by Dior since it’s her all time favourite perfume.
“Audrey? Have you finished your assignment?”
I look up and smile meekly, “Um… not yet…”
“Do you need some help?” she asks raising her eyebrows.
“It’s not my fault she had to give us such a hard assignment!” I exclaim
“I never said it was-“
“It’s not fair! How can she think we can finish it in ‘our own time’ when we’ve already got so much to do! And we only get a week! I mean come on! How are we ever meant to finish this in a week! It’s crazy, that’s what it is!” I clutch the task sheet in my clenched fist, waving it about angrily. “It’s just not FAIR!”
She walks over to me and puts her hands on my shoulders, “Audrey, calm down. Now since you’ve got yourself all worked up about this how about we just walk away and leave it for a while, ok?”
“But I don’t have time!” I wail, already thinking I’ll get a bad result on this which will ruin my overall score for the year.
“Well you certainty won’t have any time if you keep carrying on like this! Now come and have some lunch downstairs, I made you a Greek Salad. Your favourite” she says gently
I sigh, finally giving up. It was no use arguing with mum, she always won. “Ok lets go”
I drag my feet on the floor emphasising my annoyance at my mother, for taking me away from my precious homework time.
We would’ve sat in silence while eating our lunches but my younger sister, Sara was talking non-stop about some fairy game website her friend Lilli had shown her. Quite frankly I couldn’t keep up with her so I just ended up ignoring her apart from nodding every now and then like I had an idea of what she was saying.
After our rather painful lunch I march back up stairs to my bedroom, this time setting myself up on the beige carpeted floor. I grab a purple pen and carefully write ‘Ideas’ in my cursive writing. Then I draw a small star underneath and wait for even the simplest idea to come to mind. But nothing comes. Ten minutes of thinking time later I’m just about to give up when I think of a lyric from one of my favourite songs. I quickly write it down then stare at it. I groan. No I can’t do that.
So I start drawing some floral design down the margin of the page then grab a silver pen and draw some small hearts around the title. Soon my whole margin and title is filled with my little doodles, but I don’t stop there. I start writing things like quotes, lyrics and things I love all over the page. I even made a border of a vine of roses. I must admit it was cool, but it definitely wasn’t what I was meant to be doing.
“Knock, knock!”
Oh no. “Who’s there?” I reply half heartedly
“It’s meeeee!” my mum sang sauntering in like she was some well-known superstar.
“What?” I ask, just wanting for her to get to the point
She huffed, “So you haven’t finished your assignment I’m guessing?”
I just glared at her and muttered “No” under my breath
She beamed and wandered over to me and sat down and looked and my page with an amused expression “Audrey how about you think about it like this, you can’t get it all done at once. Not even a professional writer can do that. But you need to do it in steps.”
“Like in a recipe?”
“Kind of...you need to think ‘this is my goal so how am I going to approach it?’ But even before you do that you have to accept the fact that you have to do this no matter how much you may dislike it, it is something that has to be done”
“So what do I just go and talk to my assignment like ‘Hey my English teacher gave you to me so I’m going to just accept that’”
She shrugged, “If you want, but let me explain what I was going to say first. So at the moment you’re at point a but you want to get to point b but you’ve got all this space in between. That’s the journey to get there. In this journey you have to take it one small step at a time. Spacing yourself out so you won’t have to do so much at one time. Trust me I’ve only just learnt that and I’m quite old and you are only fourteen so I don’t expect you to know that. So just keep that in mind” and with that she left with a wink and a swish of her white maxi skirt. I rolled my eyes at my mum’s dramatic exit. It was so like her to be like that, but I guess that’s why she’s a drama teacher.
Even if my mum’s bonkers most of the time sometimes she can give good advice, and I think it was one of those times. So I sat thinking about what she had said and I came to a conclusion. It didn’t matter why or how I came up with an idea, just as long as I felt it was right for me. Not for anyone else just for me. If I didn’t write for me it wasn’t right, therefore it wouldn’t turn out right for me or for anyone else.
With that thought in mind I looked down at my previous page that I scribbled on and saw the lyric I had wrote down to start off with. I quickly wrote it down on the new sheet and let my imagination flow out on to the page and I knew I would be proud of my work.
_________________________________
So I know this isn't very good but I made this for an English Assignment for school cause I couldn't come up with any ideas + I'm only 13 so don't judge! xx
