Letter from the Future

So, one of my favorite authors apparently did this when she was the same age (24), and it worked amazingly for her (I mean, when she re-read it at age 29, it was surprising how close to her future self she got), so I thought, hey, maybe I’ll give this a go. I’m not expecting this to work magic, or anything, but I do think it might prove to be something to return to when things are rough and I’m tired and busy and it all feels overwhelming—or worse, hopeless.  So here we go, from future Marge to present Marge…

Dear 24-Year-Old Margaret Ann,

You may have just turned 24, and you feel like the end of grad school is the end of everything you know and maybe your whole life itself, but really, it’s just getting started.

Mom and Dad don’t know this yet—they probably won’t for a while, I hate to break it to you—but the daughter that they always thought was crazy is really actually brilliant. Sure, she’s eccentric as they come (you’re only going to get more eccentric with time, sorry), but underneath that thick layer of crazy is a person full of creative insight, imagination, and understanding who’s just waiting for the right moment and the right way to unveil it to the world.

It’s now 2019 (no, they still haven’t invented a computer charger that doesn’t take up all the room in your purse–sad) and I thought I’d give you a preview for what you’re in for. Not everything, mind you, (that would leave no plot twists!) but just some snippets. For starters, you’ve just seen the release of your first young adult novel, which was surprisingly well-received by a range of genre readers. People these days have forgotten about Hunger Games, because the with the release of your book they finally figured out what a jerk Katniss always was, and they realize now that the best protagonists have to come to terms with their flaws and grow, not shrink. You’ve started getting a small influx of fanmail, too, which is incredibly humbling and often shocking. You’re not on the NY Times bestseller list yet, but you’re looking forward to it with your second book, which is, by the way, in the works. You’re in your second revision draft of it now, and you’re excited that it’s really starting to come together. You’re in that place where you finally feel like you’ve really gotten to know your characters as people so they’re doing things of your own accord and your responsibility as the author is becoming easier (but sometimes harder) because they know what they want and what they’re going to do and they’re not going to let you just tell them anymore.

The release of YA Novel #1, though, has meant that you’ve had to do a lot of things you’d never thought about, and definitely weren’t excited about. Things like speaking in front of people, publicizing and soliciting on behalf of yourself…but it’s okay. It might never be completely fun, but with practice it’ll get easier and less embarrassing. You’re going to learn the hard way that you can’t be two people, as much as you’d like to go old school with the nineteenth century pennames.

Oh, yeah, and your friends? They just about keeled over when they read Chapter Eighteen (it might not be that one in your current draft, but you know which one I’m talking about). You know they absolutely died, because you got a sudden bombardment of text messages from Jessica, Sarah, Cathy, and Steph (a little later because she was too busy taking on the world with her academic brilliance to read it in just a short period of time) written entirely in all caps telling you “HOW COULD YOU??” and  “MARGE I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WROTE THIS WHO ARE YOU??!”. Scary as it will be to finally let them in on the secret; it’s going to be a very fulfilling moment of maniacal laughter. They’ll suddenly understand why you scoffed at Peeta Mellark and Logan Huntzberger and it’s going to scandalize them so much they’ll have heart attacks.

Don’t mistake me, though, you’ve got A LOT of work ahead of you, girl. And it’s going to be tough, sometimes, because you’re going to feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day (which, there probably aren’t), and that everything you’re doing is crap and you just wish you could just be a little better as a teacher and a little better as a daughter and a sister and a lot better as a writer. You’re going to feel completely helpless and ridiculous and arrogant a lot of the time for even dreaming that someone would want to read your trash. There are moments when you’re going to want to chuck it all in the bin, and moments where you cry your eyes out because you’ve never going to be good enough but what you’ve got to remember is that to get to that beautiful final draft you have to start with the shi**y first ones.  Just bottle up all those little voices telling you how stupid and foolish and delusional and conceited you are and shove them under your bed long enough to get out the words.

And eventually, you’re going to get to that point where you realize you can’t do any more—and you need someone else’s eyes to make it better. That’s when it’s going to get really tough: handing that polished draft over to someone else to rip it apart at the seams. It’s going to be the scariest and most painful thing you’ll ever do, but what you’ve just got to remember is that if you don’t put it out there at some point, you’ll never know what might have been. If you never let anyone read it, it can’t be made even more polished and perfect, and you’ll end up perpetually dissatisfied with it because it never got to the people meant to read it. Writers don’t write for themselves; they write for others. Even though you don’t know who they are right now, I promise you, your readers exist, and you’ve got to do it for them. You want them to have your very best possible , right? They’re cheering for you in the future as they read it, and they’re cheering for you now, too, even if you can’t hear them yet. You’ve got a lot of rejection ahead of you (sorry, but it’s quite unavoidable), but you’ve also got a good amount of success. Just keep going long enough to find it.

My one other piece of advice to you, is not to let yourself get distracted. Yes, you have responsibilities to your work and your students and your family, but you also are going to have to make time for this. It might mean getting up at 5am every morning with only 3 hours of sleep, and it might mean pushing through chapter revisions when all you really want to do is go back and re-read the last two chapters of Cress for the fifty-seventh time, or vegg out on Chinese food while watching the second season of Gilmore Girls. Set goals. Achievable ones, but concrete ones. Don’t back down, and don’t let yourself off the hook. Stick to your deadlines, starting with this one.  You’re going to be sending out agent queries starting in September of 2015, so you’d better hope it’s ready.  You’ve got a year-and-a-half to get that manuscript into tip-top shape, girl, so Get. To. It.

You can do this, Marge; I mean it. People make the mistake of thinking that they’re either born as great writers, or terrible ones. But what really matters is practice and revision. Keep working at it, and one day you will look back at everything you’ve accomplished and be, for the first time in your life, really, really proud of yourself.

Love from,

29-year-old Margaret Ann