Now, I have never claimed to be that good of a writer. In fact, I could imagine any regular reader of the free shirt archive nodding in agreement. Why should they not agree with my self-cutdown? For personal writing on my own website, I admit that I can be quite lax. The fact that I needed proofreading help after far too long neglecting how I wrote about my free shirts is quicker to point to than any particular write-up. Just imagine my writing when I was in 7th and 8th grade.

Power of the Pen is a creative writing competition that I was involved in as a seventh grader. As far as I can discern, it is an Ohio only event. Furthermore, it seems like only the schools with more money to spend send teams to the event. The poorer schools around the area seem to always qualify their teams to the international Destination:ImagiNation while the richer districts seem to sponser Power of the Pen teams.

Anyways, I wrote a story and got on my middle school's team. Some of my classmates and I went to a local middle school on a Saturday. I went to three different classrooms and wrote stories based on three different prompts. I have no idea what I wrote on, but I doubt the judges liked it since I did not move on to the next round. That was that for me. I did not go to the state finals, yet I reap the reward as if I had many years later.

Creativity is such a subjective thing that it is odd to think that competitions are based around it. Although, I do suppose nearly anything can be turned into a competition. I feel that competition ruins the art that I attempt. For others, it is what fuels them. Both sides are right overall.

Furthermore, I do not know how creative they expect extremely impressionable children to be in their writing. As far as I know, no one Power of the Pen winner has ever gotten a contract off of winning. Yes, I did look into this. Do not misread that I am against the competition, I just do not see the need for the only time this competition takes place to be two specific years of middle school. Perhaps there are other competitions for older students that I am unaware of because I would not have competed in them anyway. I had other things to do in high school.

The powers that I look for in any pen are durability and thrift. Thus, I tend to get bic classic stix because I find them to be the most affordable workhorses of all. I know there are finer writing instruments available, but I usually do not take what I am writing seriously enough to demand a better pen. Plus, I lose pens all of the time. Better to lose a dime than to worry about something for which I paid good money.