Students and faculty came together to celebrate National Day on Writing Oct. 20 with several events by Elon’s Center for Writing Excellence. Held on the first floor of Belk Library, students were invited to Writing Isn’t Scary, where they had friendly discussions about what scares them about writing. 

Senior Aidan Melinson, lead consultant and community outreach coordinator at the Writing Center, is majoring in English Creative Writing. He said he enjoyed seeing several students come out and share their connected passion of writing with themed events. 

“Since it’s two weeks from Halloween, I wanted to theme it around this idea of what makes us scared when we’re writing,” Melinson said. “A lot of people who feel that they don’t have the best relationship with writing, they think that it comes from fear. Being the Center for Writing Excellence, we want to encourage people to have a relationship with writing.” 

Halloween-themed boards decorated the first floor of Belk Library , which contained individuals’ fears about writing and solutions on how to recover from them. 

“This is an activity where people can air their thoughts,” Melinson said. “I have people writing what scares them about writing, and then I wanted to have everyone working together, so when a person shared their fears, another person could talk about it with them.”

Junior Ava Crawford has a double major in classical studies and art history and said she uses the Center for Writing Excellence often to help her with research papers. 

“I first came to the Writing Center as a freshman for help with a scholarship application, and eventually took the 3090 English class to help others with their writing as a consultant,” Crawford said. “Even though I am a consultant, I come here to see other consultants for help with my writing.” 

Crawford said her biggest fear about writing is the academic pressure with her double major.  

“A lot of the materials that we use as students have a lot of big words and concepts, and I feel like sometimes as a student, imposter syndrome sets in, and we ask ourselves if we are good writers,” Crawford said. 

Sophomore Bria Wurst is studying public health with a double minor in psychology and leadership studies and has also used the Center for Writing Excellence multiple times. 

“I have been here a lot specifically for my major in public health because we write a lot of research papers, and I had never written one before this year,” Wurst said. “It has really helped me with not only editing and proofreading, but generating ideas and bullet points in any stage of writing.” 

Wurst said her biggest fear of writing is having her work read by others. 

“I know the first time I came to the Writing Center, I was worried that my work wasn’t good enough for anyone to read,” Wurst said. “I then realized that it doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be your work because they’ll really help you at any point in your writing.” 

National Day on Writing may only come once a year, but the Center for Writing Excellence has appointments throughout the week — Monday through Friday — on the first floor of Belk Library. To book an appointment, ranging from 30 minutes to one hour, go to https://elon.mywconline.com/