One of the perks of being a writer is the ability to share your finished work wit others, so they can enjoy your passion too. But creating this finished piece takes dedication and love, and not just for one game or for a two hour practice after school, but every day that you feel inspired, which for some, is an entire life.

One of these people is Mustafa Said, a senior this year currently taking English teacher Lindsey McFall’s writer’s workshop for the fifth time. He writes 10 or more hours a week, and his longest work to date is a 285-page-plus novel, titled Destiny, which he wrote sophomore year. Said’s specialty in his stories is dark, science fiction fantasy tales with a deep underlying meaning.

“There seems to be demonic, end- of-the-world kind of themes. I guess I write better when I’m writing something serious,” Mustafa said.

Fellow writers workshop classmate Sidney Holler also sees these tendencies.

“Mustafa usually does stuff that’s really deep, but not deep sad, it [just] makes you think. I remember a lot of his pieces had a war, like an apocalypse- type thing going on. Something with the mind, something crazy,” she said.

Despite his dark tendencies, Said’s inspiration comes from normal, every day, occurrences.

“What inspires me is living, breathing. Life itself inspires me,” Mustafa said.

Said cites authors such J.K. Rowling, Ted Decker and Lemony Snicket as role models he looks up to when writing.

“When I first started writing in the fifth grade, I started modeling [my work] after Lemony Snicket, because I was reading A Series of Unfortunate Events and it hooked me from the first book. The first story I ever started writing, you could call it plagiarism, because I took A Series of Unfortunate Events and just changed the names, and I liked that,” Mustafa said. “And then one day I thought, I don’t like this at all. I want to try to make something of my own work. So that’s what got me to writing.”

Like these successful writers, Said hopes to one day get his work published. He wants other people to be able to experience his fictional world.

“People can see my work out there, and say ‘Oh you wrote that.’ It makes you happy at least someone’s going to read my work, someday,” Mustafa said.

But Said’s writing didn’t always start out ready to be published, his writing came from a general place in the beginning and his stories have evolved into what writer’s workshop teacher Lindsey McFall calls “showing, not telling.”

“So what that means is you’re not giving a general overview of the story, you’re actually creating that scene and showing it so your readers can visualize it,” McFall said. “A lot of kids come into the class telling and [eventually] get into more showing, and they have more detail and they can create a vivid scene for the reader.”

Said credits McFall with helping him grow and improve in his writing the past three years he has been taking the class.

“Mrs. McFall is an amazing teacher. I’ve known her for so long and she’s always been there, encouraged me to read my stories in front of the class, encouraged me to write the best that I can,” he said.

Taking the class five times has helped Said come up with new ideas for the same assignments, and creating inspiration.

“What’s interesting about taking the class multiple times is I can take the same assignment and think of new ways to rewrite it, so it’s never the same assignment the same way I wrote it. It’s always something different. A year goes by and I think new things and I write new things,” Mustafa said.

The assignments in the creative writing class are geared towards stimulating the student’s thought processes and improving the way they write and construct stories.

“[I learned] how to write stories with your imagination and not hold back. It wasn’t really like an English class, so she really just encouraged you to do whatever,” Holler said.

One of the main parts of the class is reading your stories to the class and getting feedback from the other students and the teacher. Students don’t have to read them, but are encouraged to.

“The class has helped me a lot because I’ve gotten a lot of feedback over the years as to how I write, what I should write, and generally help me figure out what I like writing, what I don’t like writing,” Mustafa said. “With every class comes a whole new generation of writers and [a] whole new perspective.”

Other students have noticed Said’s writing skills in the creative writing class. “I think that people look at him as kind of an expert in the class. He’s met so many people who I’m sure he considers as friends now, so I would say that people definitely look up to him. And they look forward to him sharing his assignments,”

McFall said. Graduation looms for Said, and after he has plans to continue his creative writing training and career.

“I have plans to go to college and major in creative writing. I’m going to JUCO, [but] I want to try and leave Kansas and just get out into the world,” Mustafa said.

Said admits that the end of the year will bring about one of his saddest moments: when he has to leave the creative writing class forever.

“With every day that passes by it brings me closer and closer to the day that I never wanted to come: the day I have to say goodbye to writer’s workshop,” Mustafa said. “I don’t want to say goodbye to be perfectly honest. So really it’s hard for me to move on and it’s going to be hard for me to say goodbye.”