Superintendent’s Artist of the Week: Finn Gormley

Warwick Valley High School senior Finn Gormley has been an avid reader for a long time. In fact, Finn likes reading stories so much that he decided to try writing his own. He recently finished the first draft of a short story and is working on a novel.

At WVHS, Finn completed three years of honors English and is currently taking pre-college writing. He’s looking forward to the creative writing class in the second half of the year. He’s also a member of the Writers Workshop.

“Finn is a very dedicated and enthusiastic writer, whether it be a simple homework question that he would construct in beautiful prose, or his personal creative writing that he enjoyed sharing,” said his former English teacher Alison Gray. “If Finn had free time, he was writing! It was a pleasure to speak with him about his passion.”

Finn’s current teacher, Danielle Debella, saw his unmistakable passion for the art of writing.

“When Finn speaks about his desire to be a writer, his face lights up,” Ms. DeBella said.  “This visible passion, as well as his talent and drive, is inspiring.”

Finn said he’s been writing seriously for about four years. He was encouraged after reading aloud a poem he had written during his eighth-grade English class.

“Around eighth grade I really got into writing as a hobby,” Finn said. “I was a big fan of literature and I was reading a lot of books. I thought what if I made my own stories to entertain myself. So then I started writing short fantasy stories, something like “Lord of the Rings”, and sometimes I’d do horror stories.”

Finn enjoys fantasy books like “Lord of the Rings” but also likes classical literature. He’s currently reading “Dubliners” by James Joyce as well as “Dune” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”.

Finn is writing his novel, a young adult fantasy, on an old typewriter he bought at a thrift store. He started out writing on a computer, and then switched to handwriting before picking up the Smith-Corona typewriter in June.

“It’s kind of cool to have a mixture between electronic technology and physical paper to type your letters on,” Finn said. “Before that I was handwriting most of my stuff. When I was writing on the computer my eyes would  kind of get tired, so then I wanted to have something that’s on paper.”

Finn is also involved in Youth in Government this year. His future plans include college and then possibly becoming a history teacher. He also intends to continue his writing.

“It’s a dream, but I’d like to write for a living,” Finn said. “Obviously that’s very rare, but I feel like I have a real passion for it. I just love that you can make a character and make a world by writing it; I also like the idea that I’m providing my own entertainment.”