Finding the Write Path

Hey all! I stumbled across this blogfest a while ago and thought it'll be a nice, inspiring activity to take part in. Except, well, here I am on Friday and I'm not quite sure what to say. So instead, I'm going to just start and let the dice fall as they may.

Carrie, you're welcome to use my letter. :-) 

Info: 

Name: Misha Gericke
Writing Blog: http://sylmion.blogspot.com

Right. Now it's time for me to get into the letter... wish me luck!



Hey Kiddo,

I've been grappling with what to put in this letter and.. Honestly I still am.

See, this is a letter to tell you about stuff you could do better, should do better. Things you should jump for and things you should change.

And you'd think there'd be a lot. I mean, you're thirteen and I'm twenty five.

Except there's not.

The book you're writing right now... It's going to get lost when your parents rip out the mother board and insert your grandmother's so she can write. And that's okay. Because you're going to write it again, and lose the rewrite when you're twenty two. And that's also okay because you'll rewrite it again and realize you learned so much that you would have been embarrassed if that book had actually been published.

You're going to write seven false starts before writing the book you'll publish. And your publisher will turn out to be more than a little sociopathic. But that's good, because you'll learn that no amount of validation is worth the pain and fear that comes with the thought that you'll lose the rights to a book you worked on for seven years. To any book, for that matter. And you'll act accordingly.

You will learn that you never finish first drafts to books if you plan them. You'll also learn to cling to writing because that's what keeps you sane. You'll learn to be (even if I say so myself) amazing at writing and editing, and you're going to learn it all by going through all these bad things that happened.

You're going to be strong. And we will succeed. 

And all of this will be thanks to the lessons you learned. So do stupid things. Dare. Find what doesn't work so you can work out what does. Keep striving. Keep going. And yes, do keep getting pissed off at negative people who act like they know about writing when all they've ever written was an e-mail.

Because you are better than what they say. And you knew the day you started writing the thing that I still know now:

You're awesome, and awesome people write awesome books.

Love,

Me.