With her first piece of writing shared online at age 11, people were eventually bound to find it and read it. When they did, most left hurtful comments that triggered sophomore Cassandra Michaels generalized anxiety disorder. 

“I was like really wrecked about that,” Michaels said about the comments. 

Then, she noticed more about the comments written on her first published piece, a “My Little Pony” fanfiction.

“Like, I recently went back to the story. And I think it took me a while to get into my account again,” Michaels said. “And, like, I had deleted the story, so I couldn’t read over it. But like, there was this one person who gave me genuine feedback, and like, I’m so happy that someone did that.”

Nowadays, Michaels is back posting her writing online on Wattpad, as well as posting art on Instagram. However, those comments did make Michaels take a step back from publishing and writing in general at first. 

“It definitely discouraged me from posting my writing. And for a long time, like kept me away from writing especially,” Michaels said.

Michaels also has generalized anxiety disorder, which she learned about in sixth grade. Generalized anxiety disorder affects everyone differently, but for Michaels, it causes her to act differently online and be nervous when having to work in groups.

Michaels describes the feeling of having generalized anxiety order as, “You’re fine, and then one thing happens and suddenly like, it’s all you can think about. It’s like stressing me out so much.” Michaels does take medication for it now, which relieves her of her anxiety. 

Currently, Michaels has her own story on Wattpad, “Avatyl”, which has both its prologue and first chapter available for reading. Michaels also writes fanfiction for “Invader Zim” and “Aphmau Mystreet”, which are on Wattpad as well. 

Michaels says her fanfiction is more successful because she advertised the fanfiction better, since she runs a fan blog for the things she writes about. Michaels also believes people are more likely to read about characters they know about than characters that they don’t know of. 

As for her art, Michaels either draws fanart for the series she writes about, which she posts to her fan blog, or her own characters’ art, mostly on Instagram. She carries a newer sketchbook with her at school, which has more character art inside.

What bugs Michaels is when people online repost artwork without giving credit to the artist because they don’t know who drew it. Although she hasn’t had her own art stolen, she stated that it shouldn’t be difficult to do a reverse image search to find the original creator.

One person Michaels shares her art and writing to is one of her best friends, Katrina Batelaan. The two met online on a Minecraft server and have been friends for years now, and Batelaan is also a fan of Michaels’ writing.

“Her writing is super thorough and detailed, she builds insane universes with so many characters. Not only the amount of characters but each one’s quirks that come with them! It’s something I’m truly proud of,” Batelaan said.

When Michaels and Batelaan first met in person, Michaels presented a piece of art to Batelaan. “Every art piece drawn by her are just amazing to me,” Batelaan said. “She is super kind, caring, funny, and a whole world of other fantastic traits,” Batelaan said about Michaels. “She’s fantastically silly, odd, and weird; therefore, we make the absolute best team of friends!”