Keep working, and share your work. It's tempting to think we can make ourselves into great artists on our own, and that may be possible for some of us, but I feel that the best way to overcome self-consciousness around making art is making it and sharing it with a constructive and affirming community. I hope you try again, despite your butthead teacher. My mom's ex-husband was like that when I was growing up, specifically about the fantasy shorts I wrote, and I'm still working on getting past all that.

And about hating the more obscure bits of English: I can understand why you feel that way. I worked as a writing tutor in college, and a lot of my peers felt the same way; the rules can seem contradictory at times, and there are a lot of them. At the same time, I think it's important to understand how a language works so that when you break the rules, you do it in a way that still makes sense, that's clever and unexpected. My only advice is to read your favorite authors, and pay attention to how they build their sentences. Do they use long, complex sentences with multiple clauses? Or do they use short, staccato phrasing? Do any words stand out as unusual or interesting, and why? How do the sentences work together? When a famous author breaks convention, they usually do it for some effect; knowing how the rules work can help you understand what that effect is, how they achieved it, and how you can replicate something similar. And I encourage you to try mimicking the styles of others, too; playing with how other people write can help you better understand your own style and voice, and how you would tell a story, and how you could break the rules in its telling.

Good luck, dude. I'm sure you'll write some awesome stories.