Write to Win: Hear from our winner, Kanak Khanuja from HKMA David Li Kwok Po College
Under the alias ‘White’, the student survived nine gruelling rounds of our competition to come out on top.
Kanak Khanuja says she wanted to join the Write to Win competition before she finished secondary school. Photo: HandoutAs someone who loves creative writing, I jumped at the chance to join Write to Win. I knew that as I was nearing the end of my secondary school journey, this could have been my last chance to join this contest, so I wasn’t reluctant to sign up.
While I wasn’t expecting to make it to the very end of the competition, I am eternally grateful for it.
Write to Win compelled me to defy the odds when it came to writing every essay. For the past few months, most of my commute home from school consisted of brainstorming ideas and writing responses to the prompts we received every week. Although I couldn’t spend too much time researching each topic, I ensured that my answer was always innovative and reflective of something I had learned before. Thus, my response would showcase my writing skills alongside the general knowledge I had amassed through watching the news or debating.
Every week, I constantly pushed my boundaries in coming up with better answers. I went into each week with two to three ideas, from which I picked the best one to develop further.
I particularly enjoyed answering the Round 7 question: “If you could have dinner with a stranger, who would it be?” My immediate thought was to write about Audrey Hepburn or Michelle Obama since both of them have inspired me. But I eventually chose to write about Ilona Maher, a US rugby player. My decision to write about her was rooted in how I have found motivation from her personality and confidence.
Writing is my form of self-expression. From start to finish, it is a process I find innate to my being. Still, I feel confined when the topic I’m writing about isn’t necessarily within my interests. It throws me off my game. However, I learned to work around that through Write to Win. I consider this to be one of my biggest takeaways from the competition. I learned to develop my thoughts through the prompt and not the other way around.
All in all, I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts through writing on this platform. I want to thank everyone who voted for me, as well as the editors at Young Post who gave us such interesting and thought-provoking prompts.
We have prepared some exciting prizes for our top three contestants:
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Winner: a Kindle, a City’super voucher and a YP certificate
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First runner-up: an Instax camera and a YP certificate
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Second runner-up: a City’super voucher and a YP certificate