Yesterday, when looking through my bookshelf for inspiration, I stumbled across my Geometry notes. Mind you, I didn’t particularly enjoy Geometry, so my first instinct was to bury the notebook as far under my bed as possible. But then it slipped through my fingers, falling open on my carpet. There, staring me in the face, was the fiction of Geometry past. My characters filled the room before I could stop them, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on my bed, flipping through the pages like an addict. Hidden underneath the notebook’s red plastic exterior weren’t two-column proofs. Instead, I found stories; plot maps; and perfect first lines.

Clearly, I’ve never been much of a math student.

I used to think that watching my teacher draw coplanar lines was a waste of my time, but as soon as I found that notebook, I realized how valuable the mundanity of high school can be to the adolescent writer. It’s the fuel to our literary fire; it kicks up inspiration into our eyes until the classroom around us disappears and we are left with nothing but our pencils and our ideas. Think about it. Where would teenage writers be without something—a teacher, a subject, a classmate—to complain about?

Exactly.

I turned my own complaints into a young adult novel. After the rejections started pouring in, I began to think of Polyphony HS as a safe haven for virgin writers, because Polyphony HS does something that no other agent, publisher, or literary magazine does—we talk to our authors.

When I was a sophomore, I submitted my own Geometry-inspired writing to Polyphony HS, only to receive a rejection six weeks later. But unlike the form letters I’ve received from publishing companies and agents, the Polyphony HS rejection didn’t sing praise or half-heartedly dismiss my piece. Instead, it gave me constructive criticism from three of my peers that forced me to reexamine my work with a more discerning eye. I’ve kept the suggestions I received for that one piece in mind as I continue to create, and the anonymous editors behind those comments have provided me with a more precise attention to detail.

Polyphony HS is a beautiful magazine (and I’m not even talking about our Tony Fitzpatrick cover art, although I could—trust me). For the adolescent writer, it’s an invaluable resource. It’s a place for each of us to grow, with support and with careful, but constructive criticism from our peers. It changed my writing, and I can only hope that in the year and a half I have left on staff, its message will continue to give courage to those writers too timid to share their Geometry notebooks with the world.

Shelby Brody, Editor-in-Chief