i've loved writing my entire life. i wrote a 60k word fanfic when i was 12. but when i was 15 i submitted to scholastic for the first time, won a national medal, & attended iowa young writers studio. & what followed was 2 - 3 years of toxicity (cont'd) https://twitter.com/OttaviaPaluch/status/1285027576306642945

suddenly there were competitions & publications i'd never heard of peers from iyws were winning these prizes & getting into top colleges. it felt like i had to do the same. i wrote poems even though i didn't like writing poetry & wanted to write books for kids (cont'd)

& my writing slowly converged into the topics i thought would win over contest judges. there are pieces on the internet under my name i will always regret b/c i wrote them based on what i thought what would win. (cont'd)

i thought i should write a poem about elementary school classmates laughing at my "exotic lunch" even though this never happened to me b/c i was a low income kid who got school lunch, but i thought there was only one asian american narrative! smh (cont'd)

& i also felt so bad when i got rejected -- i based so much of my self-worth on these institutions! i thought there was something wrong with me when i didn't win competitions. i never felt comfortable in the teen writing community. i was lucky to get into "good" colleges (cont'd)

but i got into mit early action, before i won national gold medals at scholastic, before i got into the adroit mentorship program. i never won youngarts or bennington or foyle. & i chose mit b/c i didn't want to be a writer anymore, not if it was gonna be like that (cont'd)

it took time to unlearn all the bullshit. i still have room to grow. but i did start writing the stuff i wanted to write & i sold a ya novel to simon & schuster my junior year of college. it's probably too "rom-com" to ever have gotten recognition from teen contests but that's ok