Thomas enjoys reading, and often reads in his free time. Although not always distinguished novels, he ends up spending quite a bit of his free time reading through other mediums such as subtitles of foreign video, or manga. Not to say he does not enjoy a good novel, for he enjoys that type of reading as well. The main reason he does not read more novels however is that he often has trouble taking time from other activities he may enjoy more than reading to embark on the seemingly long journey of reading a whole novel. When he does choose a book, he often chooses classics and highly influential books and finds he enjoys reading these distinguished books more than anything else. This summer, Thomas read at least 3 novels including "The Fall", and "The Reluctant Fundamentalist", and over the last school year, around 15. Some of his favorite authors are Isaac Asimov, Dostoyevsky, and Orwell. In his house, there are probably around 100 books on shelves.
Thomas probably does not write enough stand alone stories to call himself a "writer", and often finds it especially difficult to begin writing. People learn to write better by repetition, and going through the same steps over and over, perfecting the small, specific ways of putting words together. The reason for the demand of creative writing, is the same as the reason for any form of advances in thought; boredom. People read because they are bored, and people write because they are bored. Escaping this boredom is very appealing. The concept of improving at writing seems complex, keeping in mind structure, vocabulary, and all the other parts of a story that can be improved. How can those be effectively taught? There is so many different ways of writing that seemingly the only way is repetition. Repetition is definitely a problem for Thomas as well. Thomas has not written outside of class assignments enough to really even know what kind of writing he enjoys the most. What people enjoy reading often influences what they like writing, so although Thomas does not write often, the place to start would probably be genres he enjoys reading. Thomas does not dislike writing, often other activities are more appealing than committing to even a short story. It is apparent that motivation has been his limiting factor. The writing he has done within class is never satisfactory. Often Thomas can see the inexperience in his own writing, but cannot figure out how to do it better.