Who is Jade Carson?

This blog post is a response to the prompt "select an assignment that articulates who you are as writer or thinker". This post is an extended version of my college personal statement. I chose this post because it explains who I am as a writer, what I've been through as a writer, and where I hope to end up. The previous title of this essay was "Asphyxiation of the Hands" which explains references to my hands not being able to "breathe".

Whatever you do, do not look in my photo gallery. I’m not going to warn you more than once. Many people have taken this warning lightly and have been surprised at what they’ve seen. I am not hiding anything dirty but the photos contain a meaning and explanation that I don’t believe you will understand. Sometimes, I don’t understand, but that’s the beauty of having an endless collection of quotes on your phone because if you don’t understand one quote, there is surely another that’ll provide the definition you were looking for. My quotes were sources of inspiration for me. They gave me advice when needed or helped me with coming up with a new story idea. But one day, these quotes became useless photos on my phone. They were no longer the life savers they used to be.

I began downloading quotes onto my first smartphone when I was in middle school. Sites like Tumblr, WeHeartIt, and Twitter contained “quote photos” that always managed to capture exactly what I was thinking but didn’t have the words for. There was no plausible reason for me to download them besides the fact that they made feel good. I could share them with friends whenever I was trying to backup a point that I was making or daydream about a schoolboy crush as I read a romance quote. I would dream about coming up with an amazing quote of my own, one that would have others in awe as they save it to their phones to add to their own collection.

Learning how to read at age two gave me the ability to enjoy literature earlier in life opposed to having to wait until I was in primary school. I found myself reading any and everything that I could get my hands on, whether it was the back of a cereal box or the newspaper. My family would always spoil me with books to the point where my house started to look like a library. As I stacked the books on my bookshelf in size order, I was impressed with my collection. I honestly preferred books over toys and movies.

Reading has a way of transporting me into another world before I’ve realized that I’ve left Earth. The randomization of words on a paper could easily have me sitting on the edge of my seat, rushing to turn the page to get to the next scene. I’m able to fall in love with characters, crying over their deaths or loathe conniving antagonists and suddenly empathize for them all in the same chapter.

I remember the day I was given my first creative writing assignment. I was in primary school and given the task of creating a story and incorporating a list of words in the text. I believed that since I loved reading so much, that writing a story wouldn’t be that hard. As I sat in my living room, my mind drew a blank. I had no idea what the main idea would be, the setting, or even the names of my characters. Staring at my homework, I scribbled and erased so many times that the page had become stained with lead. From that moment on, I decided that I could never become a writer. I accept my truth that I was only meant to read books.

During my 8th grade year of middle school, I discovered an app called Wattpad. A lot of girls in my school were raving about it and almost everyone I knew had already downloaded the app. Wattpad, an online writing community, is home for all readers and writers. From the minute I joined Wattpad, I fell in love with the teen-dominated atmosphere. The site contained short stories, poems, novels, and everything in between that are user generated by budding authors who can gain a fanbase and possible fame in the community. Within a few weeks, Wattpad became my home away from home and with the keys to my new house, I unlocked a new door in my mind.

My decision to start writing again stemmed from my desire to challenge myself and become remembered in this world. The endless number of authors whose novels I read while growing up left imprints in my mind that I would never forget. The characters resonated within me, becoming my imaginary friends that I deeply cared about. I believed that if I started writing again that I could become just like the authors that I grew up reading by leaving an impact on a child’s mind, sending them on an all-expenses paid trip to outer space with just a turn of a page.

My first novella on Wattpad was atrocious. Kisses and Kalculators was my failed attempt at a catchy title for a book whose main idea was non-existent. I threw in every possible cliché I knew, such as the good girl-nerdy guy romance, the pregnant teenager, and the runaway younger sibling. At the time, I didn’t have any useful knowledge on the proper usage of grammar and mechanics. Kisses and Kalculators’ manuscript looked like a play’s script filled to the brim with the abuse of commas, absence of periods, and “screaming” capital letters. Surprisingly, the novella’s success on Wattpad distracted me from its hideousness. In less than 6 months, I had already acquired 10K reads. Users were amused at my work and as my fan base grew, so did the demands for more chapters.

It wasn’t until my ninth-grade year of high school that I truly learned how to be a writer. My English teacher, Mr. Edward Stapleton III, was a Shakespearean fanatic with a knack for the written word. He encouraged my classmates and I to creatively write in our journals every week. I learned the proper usage of grammar and mechanics through his lessons and the literature we read in class such as 12 Angry Men, A Raisin in The Sun, and a Midsummer’s Night Dream. I felt comfortable enough with him to share my work and his anal critiques and revisions helped me make the necessary corrections as well as learning how to edit my stories on my own. With his advice, I became much more confident in my work. I wasn’t afraid to show others what I was working on or to call myself an author. There are not many teachers these days that allow their students to creatively write fiction pieces or personal narratives. This leads to students not being interested in writing essays because they’re forced to write about boring topics that limit their ability to be creative. A student’s ability to write about what they go through in life was studied in California in the 90s and has proven to be an effective way to keep students engaged in written discourse and keep them off the streets. Students who are not forced to write about boring topics do not begin to resent English classes in school. (Mahiri, Sablo 32).Mr. Stapleton’s essays were never boring because it forces myself and my classmates to write in ways we’ve never done before. We were able to write about our lives or create lives for imaginary people.

In February of 2014, I began working on new content on Wattpad. I completely reinvented myself by creating a new account and writing under a pseudonym that I still use today, Jade Carson – the name derived from my discovery of the last name in a Wattpad novel. I enjoyed the pleasing aesthetic of the combination of my first name and Carson, seeing it as a clever way of hiding my young identity on the internet. My second novella, The Heartbreakers Club, followed the lives of two female characters who were members of a society that aimed to break the hearts of guys and vowed to never fall in love. It was the first novella that I took my time to outline and focus on the main idea and the cohesiveness of my writing. I managed to publish chapters weekly which led to an increase in my fanbase, demand for new chapters, and an increase in my happiness. By the end of the year, my book had already reach over 80K reads. It was astonishing to see that something I produced was responded to so well on Wattpad.

My second novella, Bad Boy Blueprint, catapulted me into the realm of well-known writers on Wattpad. The book took a twist on the infamous “bad boy theme” on the site, where an average good-guy who gets rejected by his popular crush because he’s “too nice” becomes a “bad boy” to impress her. With the help of his friends, he changed his look and personality to gain her attention but there was one girl who managed to see past his façade. Due to my love for the MTV hit show, Teen Wolf, I unknowingly infused the novel with references to the show which aided to the success of the book. Throughout writing the novel, it was my first time writing in the point-of-view of a male as well as being truly proud of my work. Today, Bad Boy Blueprint stands at over 500K reads and has been ranked at #35 in the short story genre of the site as well as being a part of the promotional campaign for the book-turned-movie, The DUFF.

My writer’s block came during the writing of the last few chapters of Bad Boy Blueprint. I was going through a rough time in high school with an increase in schoolwork and dealing my first heartbreak from a frivolous high school boy. As I sat in front of my laptop, the words in my head jumbled up together as if my brain was swimming in a bowl of alphabet soup. “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.” (Lamott 69). The quotes in my gallery gave me the same advice but I refused to accept it. I wanted my first drafts to be perfect. I knew that was unreasonable to think but to me if they weren’t perfect from the start then it’ll only get worse over time. The oxygen in my hands became deprived, my fingertips turning a shade of blue that I’d never seen before. The only way to resuscitate them were to move on to something else because trying to write became a breathless activity that I couldn’t afford to lose my breath over.

Normalizing my writer’s block became my crutch to avoid writing and the heartbreak that I occurred whenever I couldn’t seem to put words onto paper. Whenever I would share my story with people, I felt guilty referring to myself as a writer when I hadn’t worked on a novel in years. It felt as if I was lying; as if the Jade Carson I referred to was a completely different person. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about the joy I received whenever I was able to complete a chapter or viewed the outlines of future novels that were stored on my computer. I knew that I couldn’t throw away something that brought me immense happiness in my life.

I decided to go on a journey of self-discovery as a writer. I began dabbling in spoken word, which allowed me to write whatever came to mind without it having to be a lengthy chapter. I downloaded more quotes for inspiration and I tried to read books about writing. Before my freshman year at Howard began, I joined a club called the HerCampus: Howard Chapter, an online publication for college women, as a contributing writer and recently appointed Lifestyle/Advice Editor. I saw it as my way of getting back into the field and I’m running my own column called “How To Be A Bison” that’ll contain 22 articles with advice for the Class of 2022. I’ve also started a blog called “Love, Jade Carson,” where I’ll be documenting my life in and outside of college without the restrictions of deadlines or guidelines.

I knew that coming to college would help me on my path to becoming a better writer because I would be in new surroundings that’ll help foster creativity and allow me to come up with new content. Although I would have to write more essays than usual, it’ll be a way for me to improve my academic writings, read thought-provoking pieces, and learn different writing techniques from my classmates and professors. As I read the quotes on my phone, their words strike me in ways that they’ve never done before. They seep into my body, their messages running through my blood allowing me to type and continue to do what I love. My writer’s block still comes and goes but now-a-days it feels as if my hands are able to breathe much easier again.

Works Cited

Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts”. Visions and Cyphers, Edited by David F. Green Jr, Inprint Editions, 2016, pgs. 66-69.

Mahiri, Jabari., and Sablo, Soraya. “Writing for their lives: The non-school literacy of California’s urban African American youth”. Visions and Cyphers, Edited by David F. Green Jr, Inprint Editions, 2016, pgs. 15-32.