Letter to a Discouraged Writer

For a moment, put away your pen. Forget your ambitions. Think about your favorite books, silly or profound, and where you were when you first read them. Remember the light they brought you, the joy, the laughter, the tears, the healing.

Remember how you felt when you finished them the first time. Were your wounds torn open so you could finally heal properly? Or were they already beginning to close? Were you laughing so hard you cried? Or crying so hard you laughed?

Did you feel one tiny, infinitesimal bit less alone, less lonely, less despairing? For just a moment, did you feel understood? That someone had peered into your soul into the innermost parts of your being?

Maybe, even, you simply felt at peace, forgetting your misery as you immersed yourself in the journeys of another. It may sound small, but it’s no small thing, is it?

That is what you have to offer the world. What reading has done for you, you can do for others.