Untitled (Essay about me)

Okay, so I had to write this for school, and its due on Monday. So please help me figure out a title and please tell me if there is anything else I should add!


It was a bright Tuesday afternoon and a light spring wind picked up my hair from my shoulders. I slowly opened the black mailbox and took in the sight of the perfect envelope, my name and address on the top. My hands trembled as I picked it open and unfolded the letter inside. I sighed as the word, reject in the letter. “Oh well,” I thought. “Better luck next time.” This was my first big, real experience in the world of writing. Writing is my passion, but it would be completely worthless without the encouragement and experiences I have with my friends and family.
I have been writing for as long as I can remember. I would write short stories for my family and make picture books too! I still love to write short stories, but as I have grown older, I have begun writing poems and stories that turn into a hundred pages! Writing affects my whole life. I put a lot of time and effort into my writing, so sometimes I get so lost in the world of my story that I forget what time it is! And what only seemed to be a few minutes, was really over an hour! A lot of the characters I make up are some of my best friends, as crazy as that sounds. I admire them, care for them, and can get very frustrated with them, just like my real friends.

This is where my real friends come in. My friends are probably the smartest, funniest, most beautiful people I have ever met, and I’m the luckiest person in the world to have them as friends. I have friends I have shared baby clothes with, and others that I have met just this year. Some are short, some are tall, some are boys, some are girls, the list is endless. I have so many memories and inside jokes with each friend that I couldn’t even begin to tell you all of them. We spend so much time together my parents call us “joined at the hip,” which is probably true! We always hang out together whatever day it is.

Even though I spend so much time writing and with my friends, I always have time for my amazing, large family. I am the youngest in my family, the youngest of eight to be exact. All my siblings are either married or off at college, so I am the only one living at home, and I guess it will be like that for the next five years. But I’m not completely alone! I have my brother and his wife and their four nieces who live five minutes away! I have ten nieces and nephews in all, and I like to think that I am their favorite aunt, Aunt Emily! This next year it will be very different, many of my siblings are moving away and we’ll be scattered all over the world! One of my brothers is even moving to China with his wife! What a change that will be! But I know that we will all keep in touch and still be our unique, crazy family!

I always wondered what everyone would think if I really did get published, if I would be famous and rich, if I would have fans. But I have realized, that I already do have fans and do have people who love me. They’re called my friends and family, and I couldn’t love them any more than I already do. Writing is my life and my dream, and my friends and family are more than I could ever ask for.

I realize it's a bit late to be replying, but if you could tell us the parameters of the essay and what you're required to write about, then we'd be able to help you a bit more.

Hey. Sorry this is kind of late in regards to your deadline; hopefully you'll see this before you have to turn it in.

I slowly opened the black mailbox and took in the sight of the perfect envelope, my name and address on the top

The last clause isn't grammatically tied to the sentence in any real way. It's fine for casual writing or even creative writing, but for an essay for school, I'd suggest you add something to tie it in with, or just reword it somehow.

I sighed as the word, reject in the letter.

This doesn't make much sense. Reword it somehow. Perhaps you mean something like "I sighed as I saw the word "reject" in the letter." ?

This was my first big, real experience in the world of writing.

Too many adjectives actually end up detracting from the emphasis you are trying to make. This is almost always the case in writing. So I'd say either delete "big" or "real". I'd suggest deleting "big" though, because that's a no-no word anyway in good essays. (As are other low-vocabulary words like "small", "good", "bad", etc.)

I have my brother and his wife and their four nieces who live five minutes away!

Do you mean "daughters" instead of "nieces"? Because they're your nieces, right, and your brother's daughters.


Overall
This is the main thing I have to say: every exclamation mark you have in there, look over it and decide if you really need it. And then, regardless of what you've decided, delete it. Delete it, delete it, delete it. Replace it with a period. And do this with every single one.
In formal essays for school, never, ever use exclamation marks. Maybe once in every five essays that you write, will there be a legitimate place for a good exclamation mark. They just don't set the right tone for formal essays. And I feel that they detract from any kind of emphasis, ironically enough. Periods have more power.

Overall, though, this was very well-written and sweet. I'm assuming the prompt was just some kind of "tell me about yourself" thing? I think you'll do really well. This is definitely way better than the average 9th-grader's work.