Growth of a Writer

By Jamie Haines

I have loved to write since I was in fourth grade, and my teacher put a picture on the board and asked us to write about it. He said he would display the best pieces, and mine was one of them. He told me privately that I had talent, and he began to allow me 40 minutes of class time to write. Once my stories were completed, my teacher invited me to read them to the class.

I had only recently been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and put on an individual education plan at that time, but my teacher didn’t dismiss me. He helped  me identify my superpower.

I left fourth grade inspired, confident and passionate about writing. So, I never stopped. It is what I know I want to do.

I am a junior at Westfield State University, majoring in English with a concentration in writing. I mostly write creatively—short fiction stories, novels. However, I wanted to branch out of my comfort zone and look at professional writing, so I connected with Janice at Beetle Press to express interest in an internship that will give me experience in PR, blogging and other writing styles.

After graduation in 2018, I see myself living in an apartment in a city, working for a publishing company, editing manuscripts by day, and writing my own novels by night.

In the five months I will spend working with Janice at Beetle Press, I will write press releases for clients, pen blogs for beetlepress.com, help manage Janice’s various social media efforts, and copyedit and provide feedback on several authors’ manuscripts, and perhaps even one of Janice’s own books.

I am excited with the opportunity to grow as a writer, and I think it’s incredible that I will have my hands in work produced for business people and nonprofit organizations as well as for creative writers. That is a broad scope of real-world knowledge to glean in one semester, and I can take it with me.

When I am not working with Janice, I am the fiction editor for Westfield State’s literary magazine, Persona. I have been on the staff since freshman year, helping to produce the creative publication. I’m originally from Mansfield, a small town 40 minutes from Boston.

I have an interesting family. My dad, Rick, works as a certified mental health counselor at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge and has his own private practice in Watertown. My mom, Devon, is a nutritionist and will soon work in my dad’s practice. My older sister, Jenna, is going for her PhD in microbiology at University of California Berkeley. I also have two cats and a black lab at home.

A fun fact about me: I wrote a 100-plus-page novel with a local published author in my senior year of high school for my senior project and only had six months to write it. I designed a cover for the piece, and put it together in a binder. I am currently working on getting my short stories published and then maybe I’ll go back to that novel and edit it!