A Letter to Myself as a Young Writer
My dearest young Lucinda,
Write because you love.
Write your suffering, yes, write what has hurt you, shamed you, terrified you, made you ragefully angry. Sure. But don’t write that for others. Writing your pain is a gift for yourself. What you have been through is not a spectacle for the world to consume. Don’t give into the collective addiction to distraction: using other people’s pain and suffering to become distanced from their own. The hungry maw of the overculture never stops consuming.
You’ll receive deep gifts from terrible moments. Use them. Gather your strength. Your awareness. Your resilience. Your connection to your inner knowing. Use what has broken and then healed within you. A scar that has healed well is resilient and strong.
Don’t censor yourself when you write. Don’t limit your imagination because it’s not something you usually write about, or because you worry about what others will think of you. Write whatever you want to, whatever you can dream up.
Some of the adults in your life will let you down. They will act inappropriately when you read them stories of your expansion, your self-discovery. They will accuse you of unoriginality and tell you it has all been said before- and they will be wrong and not care they are wrong. They will take advantage of your youthfulness. They will cross the boundaries you don’t even know to have yet. They will bury the results and deny your brilliance. They will flip roles and require your caretaking. It is okay to step away, and to say when something doesn’t feel right.
Don’t hold on to the paralyzing burdens of shame, confusion, and fear the adults in your life try to give you. You can find and use your unique voice to express what you imagine, think, and believe. Many expressions of a similar idea are valid. Look at the variety of apples, the range of minerals, the combination of prismatic colors that make up rainbows.
When people get upset by what you’re writing, it can mean you’re onto something. Keep going. Praise isn’t the only affirmation. Sometimes, but not always, people will use what you write against you. Know this. Consider carefully who you share your writing with while you’re still finding your own voice. Explore how you can protect yourself.
When your voice has been silenced, muffled, ignored, driven underground by those who would not believe you, hear you, understand you, see you truly, or care for you, care about you, protect you from harm…write. This place, the privacy of your own language, your own code, your own space, ink and paper, gives you back your voice. Write.
Think about what it means to write. What drives you. What you want to accomplish with your words. Why your need to write is so powerful. Think about how you will write through the hard stuff. Who you’re writing for. Whose writing has inspired you, and who you might be able to inspire to action. Inspire: enspirer, inspirare. Think about how the truths you tell will make breathing in, filling with grace, living, possible.
Write for your life. Write yourself, the parts you can’t describe, until you bring yourself into existence. Write the enigma of existing. Write your own permission, write your own freedom, write your own vision of surviving, stabilizing, thriving. Write from your queerness, write from those lenses and frameworks the world will not and has not validated - the ones the world around you can’t see you having, doesn’t even know exist. Write for the life you need so you can keep it going another day. Write until you have made enough space for your own peace to take root. Write to create the possibility that you can actually exist in this world, despite its incessant drive to destroy you and all who might be like you.
Write because you are alive.
With deep love and respect,
Your future self,
Lucinda
Today, April 10, is National Encourage A Young Writer Day. Young writers are helping to bring the worlds we all need into being. Take time today to get in touch with a young writer in your life and offer them some encouragement!
