I really do believe some people are naturally novelists and some people are short story writers. For me, when I was in middle school or high school, I started with novels.
I really had a rough time in middle school. Middle school to me was the way most people explain high school. Then in high school I had a blast. I basically did everything that you would do in high school or in college, so it really wasn't a difficult thing to pull out.
I tend to be more of a novel writer. In fact, some of my novels started out as short stories, and I just got carried away! I think some of my best writing is in the short story form, but novels come more naturally to me.
Everybody's gone through high school; everybody understands that dynamic. Some people have a great time, and some people don't have a great time. My high school experience was not the greatest. I wasn't necessarily bullied, but I was one of those guys that just goes along, and I didn't really feel connected to many of the social cliques.
Grade school, middle school and high school were relatively easy for me, and with little studying, I was an honor student every semester, graduating 5th in my high school class.
I started getting into clothes when I was really young. And then I went through a phase in middle school where I didn't care at all. But after that, after high school, I really got into high fashion. Balmain, Givenchy, Louboutin, all that.
What I'm really addicted to is getting people to understand that if their kids aren't competent readers coming out of middle school, it's really going to be hard for them in high school.
I went to high school with some wonderful people, but my entire high school experience was just waiting to leave.
I started learning filmmaking by joining a weekend film school in Bengaluru. I made some amateur short films that got appreciation from people around me.
I know from my own personal experience. I was bullied in middle school and high school and went through my fair share of hard times thereafter. Also, one of my really good friends committed suicide when I was in high school.
In Greenville, we were blessed to have lots of youth arts programs. I changed middle schools to go to an arts middle school. Then, when high school came, I went to normal high school for a little while before auditioning for the Governor's School for Arts and Humanities.
I started writing songs in high school. And eventually, I got some songs recorded by some major artists, mostly because I was out there performing, and I was working in coffee houses and lounges, and people came to see me and hear my material.
I was a lot smaller in high school, and guys were a lot bigger and faster than me. I stole some bases in high school, but it wasn't until my senior year that I started getting faster.
I came from a prep school in New Jersey, so I get that when I got to FSU, some people weren't sure about me - I didn't play in Florida or Texas or at a powerhouse high school.
McCain is the kid who was really cool in middle school but never got high school game and people are sick of him acting like he's still popular.
High school was the first time I ever saw spoken word poetry. The first place I ever performed a poem was at my school, so in some ways it was the nucleus of how it all started. For me I think high school was a period of trying to figure myself out, and poetry was one of the ways I did that, and was a very helpful avenue to try to do that.
From middle school to the first year of high school, I went to a school in Miami that seemed like a private country club. The whole cheerleader, football player, clique-y thing there was terrifying. Those people were so scary. They're the scariest kinds of people because they are idolized by their peers.