To a Future Writer: Keep Trying Hard Things (and the Occasional Crackfic)

We asked participants in our Young Writers Program to write a letter to their future selves about their hopes, dreams, and reminders of what they love about creating on the page. If you want to support the future of tomorrow’s stories,check out our YWP campaign here. Today, Stella hopes she never forgets NaNoWriMo:

Dear future me,

What’s the future like? I bet it’s not really all that different. Sure, there might be new social media, new franchises, new political issues. But I bet a lot of things are the same. You probably still haven’t reached 5 feet, haven’t gotten around to watching Soul Eater (but still rewatch FMA Brotherhood at least twice yearly), and there probably still aren’t flying cars like National Geographic promised we’d have by 2012 (those jerks)…

But most importantly, I bet you still write. Sure, maybe not full time. Maybe you still never finish anything, and maybe you still have a hard time coming up with characters. Even so, I’m sure you still write, be it full-length novels or 300-word crackfics at 2 AM. And I can say for certain that you still do NaNoWriMo every year, without fail.

I don’t know if you remember, but I’ve always invented stories, even when I was a toddler. I always had an understanding of literature, and things like dialogue, punctuation, and descriptions came naturally to me. But it never occurred to me that I was capable of writing them down, because I always had this strange notion that writing was something only magical people known as “authors” could do. They must’ve been chosen by the gods or something, because I never stopped to think that maybe they had to work to become authors in the first place.

It wasn’t until I heard about NaNoWriMo that I tried writing a story. And sure, my first one sucked, but it got me started, and that’s what counts. Right now, I’m working on my first original story, and that’s a huge accomplishment for me; unlike other people, I have a very difficult time coming up with characters and plots on my own. This is my first time.

Not only that, but NaNo has made me who I am. Yeah, there were some bad times that scared me. But there were also good times. Fun games, cool projects. I made friends I’ll never forget. If it weren’t for making signatures on NaNo, I would have never decided to become a graphic designer (speaking of which, do you work for Disney yet?).

NaNo has taught me a lot, and made me a more tolerant person, sometimes in ways I didn’t even know I needed to be. The people in the community are so amazing, so welcoming, and unique, and smart, and friendly, and just all-around wonderful.

So I hope that no matter where your online home is now, be it LiveJournal, Tumblr, or even NicoNico, you never forget NaNo.

Best Wishes (do you still make that reference, I wonder?),

Me, 6/4/14.

Stella is a 16-year-old writer from the lovely state of Connecticut, where she spends most of her time watching anime, studying 3D modeling and graphic design, breeding ridiculous amounts of Pichu for unknown reasons, and of course procrastinating on the NaNoWriMo YWP forums. She is currently working on her first truly original story, a novel about magical girls except that they’re all boys. Her favorite color is purple and her favorite piece of punctuation is the semicolon.