An Open Letter to a Girl Who Thought She Could Write.

Dear August-2016 Me,

You think you can write. You probably have even admitted this belief out loud. A few days ago, I found a note from your Third Grade teacher, "You are going to be a great author one day!" All this is actually quite amusing.

This teacher, she sees your potential. Perhaps she is the reason you also see your potential.

If you still don’t get the gist of this letter, put potential in quotation marks. You have “potential”. Lots of it. You are optimistic and bright-eyed, but little do you know, in a month, the cup will begin to look less than full and your eyes are bound to be tired from trying to soak in all the knowledge and heart that floats around your Advanced Placement English class.

Over the past couple of months, I have watched as your belief in yourself has been eviscerated by pages of ink-filled edits and recommendations. "Constructive criticism." This is the first time anyone has cared enough to challenge you in this way. Note to self: you are not completely devoid of writing ability; you just have a lot of potential.

“You have potential,” a nice way of saying, “You’re just not there yet.” The first time you hear this explanation, you will take this as an insult. How could you not? In your eyes, anything less than hitting the mark is absolute failure.

The truth is, the fact that you have not yet reached the magical land where true writers live is okay. But even though I tell you this, I know you won’t believe me. Remember your audition prompt: adversity and how it may or may not prompt hidden talents to reveal themselves? That prompt will mock you for the rest of the year. This class is the adversity and those hidden talents? You will have to wait and found out what they are. Whatever you said in your zeroth AP Lang essay is not going to be how you feel during the fifth or sixth months of the course, but that’s also okay.

You will feel strong and see your talent later in a moment of rose-coloured retrospection, and that moment will be awesome. So don’t give up. Have potential. Because the truth is, you will spend the next years, long past high school, full of potential.

You think you can write. You probably even admitted this belief out loud. Seven years later, you will still think you can write. You will still admit it out loud (admittedly with a bit more hesitation). Not because you didn't learn anything this year, but because you have. You have learned that writing is all about having potential.

Having the potential for greatness, the potential to break and mend hearts, the potential to understand and relate to people. Potential.

When you sit in front of a blank page, willing the swirls in your head to become a coherent string of words, you are swimming in the potential of what could be.

When those words become a reality, and you begin the work of rewriting, rewording, and revising, you are working with the potential of what you have not yet said.

When you do the brave thing and share your pieces with the people around you, you are offering the gift of your potential to the world. And who knows what could come of this extraordinary act.

Writing is all about potential. You need to know this now, because there will be months (sometimes even years) when you won’t want to write–anything. The blank page will be too scary. The revising will be too tedious. And the brave thing will require a little more courage than you have to access.

You will be tempted to give the whole practice up, please don’t.

Writing is all about potential and you have potential. Lots of it.

With hope,

The Future Me Who Still Hasn't Found the Magical Land of Writers, But is Still Reeking of Potential.