Dear Teen Me (Holly Schindler)

Look, kid, you're doing good. You know you are. You make straight As and you maybe aren't lighting the social world on fire, but you also know nobody is. You date and you have fun, but it doesn't get in the way of your schoolwork. 

Here's where you need to watch out: you think life's going to be pretty straightforward. You think you've got it all figured out. That you have a kind of magic touch, almost. People throw the word talented at you a lot. 

Seriously--stop thinking so much of that. Maybe you do have a kind of innate knack with words, but it isn't everything. It's not even 10% of anything. And right now, if you follow the instructions and turn in your assignment, you succeed. But as hard as it is to believe, there will be a time when you don't. 

You'll go to college as planned, and you'll do well. After you get your masters, you'll go all-in on your writing career (as you've always dreamed). 

And no one will want to publish your work. 

It will go on for years. Seven and a half years, in fact, before you sell a book. But you will sell a book. It won't be to a big publisher, not the first. It won't be for much money at all. But you will expect the world to recognize it: You published a book! You set out to accomplish a dream and you did!

Yeah. People don't do that. In the years that follow the final bell, people will be really good at finding reasons not to be impressed with you: you aren't published by the Big Five, or when you are published by the Big Five, you're not a bestseller. Etc., etc., etc.

The thing is, the only person who can make you feel like a writer is you. Right now, scribbling in your notebooks, you are a writer. 

So that's the advice, Teen Me: think of yourself as a writer right now. Don't expect the rest of the world to call you that or make you that. You make you that. You're a writer. 

Now get back to it. I know you have a poem you've been itching to get on paper.

Love,

Old You

~

Holly Schindler is an author of books for readers of all ages. Her debut YA, A Blue So Dark, received a starred review in Booklist, a silver medal in Foreword INDIES Book of the Year, and a gold medal in the IPPYs.