"We should get jerseys 'cause we make a great team, but yours would look better than mine 'cause you're out of my league"

I took a college creative writing class my senior year of high school, and one of our assignments was to write ourselves a letter of encouragement to keep writing. My teacher said she would send them to us at a random time after we graduated. I had totally forgotten about the whole thing! But yesterday, I got a letter in the mail, and it was in my handwriting..... and it was that letter! I read it and it seriously almost made me cry. Actually, I couldn't even believe I had written those words. But... obviously, I did. Soooo... I thought if there were any other writers out there (which, I know there are), I would show you what my letter said... it actually was a HUGE encouragement about writing, so, here it is if you want to read it:

Dearest Emily (or, insert your name here),

You're still writing poetry, right? You're still keeping notebooks and notebooks and notebooks full of your thoughts, memories, and feelings on your daily life? Don't ever forget how much you LOVE doing that, and how much JOY it brings to your heart. Keep writing! Remember this quote from the sweet movie Finding Forrester: "The first key to writing... is to write. Not think." Sit down at your computer and just start typing! You don't need to think about what you're going to type- just do it. No matter where you are in your life right now, take a moment and remember how passionately you feel about writing. Just because you read over what you've written and you realize that it is possibly the worst thing you've ever written... no worries! "You write the first draft with your heart. You rewrite it with your head." Your heart is sometimes going to produce one big mess of stuff on the paper or on the screen because at times your heart will feel like one big mess, but don't fret about it- because that's natural and it doesn't mean you're a bad writer. You can always go back and polish something off and make it better. You learn as you go what worked great and what did not work at all. You make mistakes as a writer, but just like anything else in your life- you learn from them and move on. The world is not always going to praise you for what you write- no matter if it's your best friend, or a complete stranger, or some prestigious professor critiquing your pieces, never forget: "What we write for ourselves is always better than what we write for others." Ultimately, you write for yourself, Em. You write because you love writing, and strangely you somehow understand your life better when you put things down on paper or on a screen. It is a special thing that makes you the person that you are and the person that you always will be. Remember that you can write about ANYTHING! Write letters to God, write your prayers and your worries and your fears to Him. THe possibilities are endless. You can write about hysterical things that happened during your day, you can writer about your crazy antics with your friends, love, and music. You can evenwrite about a bad time you hadt that you now understand had to happen in order to bring you to where you are right this second. All of these things (and SO much more) are significant in your life and deserve to be documented because you have a gift, Em- a gift of writing! Not only are you good at it, but you enjoy finishing a poem and looking back at it years later and remembering how you felt when you wrote it. Don't even try to deny it! Don't lose that joy. If you have been neglecting to write lately, don't even worry- start again today! The important thing... is just to WRITE. And remember... Jesus loves you no matter HOW crappy your first draft is. :-)

Love, yourself :-)