A Penny for your Thoughts: What would you tell your younger self?

Writer’s Digest has a weekly writer prompt and I thought I would participate.

What I Would Tell My Younger Self: You’ve been given one-time access to a time machine to visit your younger self. After a brief pause, you know the when and the where, hop in the machine and take off. When there, you chat with your younger self but offer one piece of advice to him/her that you hope will change his/her future for the better. Start with your arrival in the time machine (and what does your time machine look like) and end with your arrival in the future noticing something that has changed.

It didn’t take long for me to come up with my answer, however the problem is when do I tell myself? When I’m 16 and love reading everything I can get my paws on? Or when I’m 19 and have discovered new and exciting things on the internet along with a group of people who influenced who I am today? And one of them I consider family to this day. Or perhaps when I’m the magical age of 22 and writing but not getting anywhere with it? Maybe when I’m 30 and not working and going a little stir crazy?

I didn’t do a very good job following the prompt because I’m not exploring what my time machine would look like (it would be the one from the movie that was also featured on Big Bang Theory, come on…) but that’s irrelevant. I know the advice I would give: Never stop writing.

I would tell myself no matter what it takes, write.

Write everything down, every little detail. Write it all down – the good, the bad, the ugly. Write stories, Write articles, Take writing classes that are actually capable of teaching you something. (Because a lot of them seem to repeat the same techniques and follow the same classic books to show how to tell a good story.)

Grab the muse and hang on for dear life and see what you can really accomplish. I don’t have to win awards, I don’t have to be famous. I would love to be able to live off my writing and travel and experience exciting things. So, yes. If I could go back, I would tell myself to keep writing, keep imagining, keep creating something wonderful.

If I could do this, I would probably go back even younger. It’s the only thing that I would want to change about my past – all those years I wasn’t writing. Even if I had only written 1000 words a day, just imagine how many words that would have been for all the days, months, years that I didn’t put word to digital screen. It’s absolutely mind-blowing. And I will never let that happen again. As long as I can see, as long as I can type – and when I can’t do either perhaps I can get dictation software, but hell, even then – I will not stop writing.

Grab your dream. Grab your muse. And don’t let go. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t, that you’re less than, that you’re incapable, that you don’t have talent (sometimes you need talent, but you can fake it til you make it).

Now go out there and find your spot in the sunshine.