I hope you are still loud without apology and you speak your mind. Know that you do make things that are beautiful, and powerful and hold that knowledge in a secret place, the hollow of your chest where no one can take that away from you. Those moments when you could be walking done a street, sitting in a coffee shop, standing at the front porch in the very early morning watching the fog roll in and you know, completely and profoundly that you have done something amazing. The editing while trying to balance your laptop on your knees on a moving train. With the long days measured in sentences and cups of coffee. Mostly I hope you are still in love with writing, with telling stores, with the process, the craft. Not because anyone wanted you to but because you wanted to, and you were enough. Not because that’s what writers always say, that phrase that can sound so patronizing so naïve when you’re trying to get by on two hundred dollars every quarter.īut because your life is too short not to be proud of yourself, not to come alive, and be in love with something that you have created. No, I’m not going to give you advice but I do have some things to say.įirst off I hope you write what you love, what makes you happy, what come alive. I hope that you write things that I cannot hope to write and that you look back with fondness at the stories I wrote ten years ago, five years ago - the stories I am writing now. That’s what happens when we get older, we change into different people, with different stories to tell. Just as I am a very different writer from the writer I was five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago. I suspect that at this point you are a very different writer from me, who writes very different things. Not for you, my future self, and not for anyone else. We are happy to share these messages with you.īelow is a message from author E.E.

20, 2014, we asked five writers to share the messages they would send to their past or future selves. As part of the GRNW 2014 conference keynote on Sept.

The Craft of Love by E.E. Ottoman